#I could go on even with my limited education about how each interpreter brings their own version of the song to the table

[charlataninred]

Also before I shut up about this, I know they don’t get as much recognition, but I HIGHLY recommend watching the ASL interpretation of Kendrick’s performance. Matt Maxey ATE SO HARD.

If the link works properly it should go to just before not like us starts, bc I LOVE the energy here especially, but the entire thing is so fun

(I can’t seem to find the other interpreter’s name anywhere? If someone know it pls lmk and I can add it to the og post)

Edit: tysm to @river-lethe-tears for telling me the other interpreters name is O4, or Otis Jones IV, and that he’s who interpreted Lift Every Voice And Sing for Ledisi!!

[kikyan]

Yandere Octavinelle Headcanons

TW/CW: Dark content up ahead!! Yandere content specifically, mentions of abuse, manipulation, violence towards the reader, mental instability, etc. Proceed with caution! 

Mini side note because of the comment (that is now deleted or either I’m blocked) from my Savannaclaw Headcanons. This is yandere content, granted a quick glance at all my headcanons and other pieces by creators, you’ll see how different everyone’s interpertation and writing is different. Not every yandere content out there is yandere simulator. I don’t think all of these character is gonna pick a weapon and start going to town on half the cast. I like to focus on how they’d be in a relationship, how they’d react, and what I think they are capable of. So no, a lot of my content doesn’t have someone stalking their S/O and killing potential suitors but that doesn’t mean it’s not yandere? Sorry it’s just that I tried adressing it but I guess the OP blocked me, oh well. Enjoy!! 

DISCLAIMER:  These are my interpretations of his/her/their persona and none of these is 100% accurate. I don't condone any of these actions in real life and all of this is purely fictional and should be taken as such! Underage characters will ONLY  be given SFW headcanons, please respect this decision!

Banner made by @herestrish​! Pls don’t steal! 

Azul Ashengrotto 

Long overdue headcanons, but I shall deliver. Azul is complicated. I think all of Octavinelle is complicated because I can see them acting in two different ways. Azul was bullied for being overweight and it had an impact on his character. He worked hard to get people to see him as someone for his abilities rather than his appearance, even if the means were shady. Post over blot he still has some insecurities, but he doesn’t shy away from them and chooses to face them head-on. As for his yandere type, I can see him as a very manipulative person (no matter what) but I can also see him as very overprotective and clingy. 

I’m torn between seeing him as someone who loves his S/O but clings on to the fear that someday they’ll leave him. Resulting in him trying to strike a contract with you without you knowing until after you try to leave him (if you do). He’s confident and prideful, but just like his over blot, he’s horrible at handling his emotions (he just like me fr).  The manipulation at first isn’t anything too extreme, just casually bashing others to bring himself up. “He won’t pull his weight on the project, I’ll help you”, or “He’s bad news, nothing good from hanging out with them.” Little by little he’ll limit who you hang out with, and what you do, and he’ll build himself up as the ever so reliable and helpful Azul. 

Overprotective, almost all of them are tbh. He cares for you, genuinely. He just can’t express himself truthfully, he might see the relationship the same he’d see a deal. He holds himself to a high standard, the type to never break a sweat in public but deep down panicking the whole time. He’d probably have the Leech twins be your bodyguards from time to time and they’ll agree for the most part. It’s interesting to see what Azul finds intriguing about you. Besides, it’s amusing to see Azul care for you in his way, even if he gets embarrassed and fumbles the bag. Cares for your education and your reputation! 

This is where it gets me, I’m not quite sure how this happens. If you meet Azul and you guys develop a relationship, kudos! If not, he might strike a deal. I’m conflicted because I see Azul as someone who cherishes the type of relationship where they get to know each other and see their true selves, but I also see him as the type to be afraid of that. He’s worked tirelessly to build himself up but if he confessed to his S/O and they said no, I don’t think he could ever recover. To avoid being hurt, he’d probably use shady means to get his S/O. This is where he might strike a deal. He’ll catch you in a shady deal, an embarrassing situation, etc. He’ll use it as blackmail, forcing you into a relationship with him. He’s not that clingy though, don’t mistake him. He’ll wave it off as a business deal, it benefits us both so what do you have to lose? It’s confusing really, Azul doesn’t seem to care (if you happen to go down this route only) so why did he propose this deal? If his S/O just can’t stand it and proposes to cancel whatever deal they have that binds them to him, he’ll snap. 

He’ll cry, reverting to his crybaby self. He’s so insecure he can’t stand the idea of your rejection. He’s clinging, begging you to reconsider. He’ll do anything you ask of him just please, please don’t leave him. He’ll rewrite a contract, he’ll show affection, he’ll give you anything you want just don’t say that. Don’t even think of leaving him. It’s quite a sight really, you never thought the same man who once held himself up so high is on his knees begging for forgiveness and to make it right. This is why he’s a bit complicated, I feel like the very manipulative ‘read the fine print’ man suits Azul, but at the same time, he’s a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. Granted you’d have to push his buttons a lot for that to happen, but it’s a possibility. 

In terms of scale, I want to say it’s a 6/10. His contracts are where he gets you hence why it’s a bit high. The contact that he can use to steal any ability you have is quite a tricky one. He’s powerful, and he knows how to use it but it doesn’t help much when he’s not so great himself. 

Floyd Leech

Run. No kidding, as a yandere the Leech brothers are fucking scary as all hell. I want to start and say this, in normal general relationship headcanons do I see the Leech brothers as genuinely loving their S/O? Yes of course, but these are yandere headcanons and while it’s not impossible don’t hold your breath. As yanderes, these brothers are out for blood. They’ll share similar traits with a few exceptions, I see Floyd as being clingy, possessive, and sadistic. 

The leech brothers don’t see their S/O as a partner for now, they’re only a pet for now. Floyd would be clingy in the sense that he sticks to you like glue. He’s always there, whenever you think you have privacy, you don’t. While they both act like gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, Floyd is that gum that’s visible but won’t come off. Meaning, you see him and know he’s coming, just that you can’t stop him. He’s always there, meaning the torment never ends. He drives people away, nobody comes to your rescue because nobody wants to mess with him. 

He sees his S/O as a toy. While both want to see your reactions, what makes you tick and you’re there for their amusement, Floyd is restless. As long as this doesn’t interrupt Azul’s work, don’t count on him for saving. He’s sadistic, he wants to hurt his S/O. At first, we’re under the impression that he doesn’t know what's wrong and that he just needs to be talked to. It spirals when you notice that he does know what he does and fully intends to continue. The type to push you to the cafeteria floor and then ask, “Is everything okay? Don’t get my shoes dirty shrimpy. . .” He hides behind that fake concern and laid-back persona. Any ‘accident’, I can assure you is not one. Your report that you worked tirelessly on is suddenly missing? Your project is in ruins? You didn’t finish your presentation? All of Floyds doing, he simply enjoys seeing you in uncomfortable situations. He smiles when you make eye contact with him mid-scolding from Trein. He offers false condolences when your project is broken, earning praise for being so concerned for you. What a nice friend isn’t he? 

Despite all his flaws, he doesn’t let anyone mess with you. He rather be the cause of your suffering. Possessive in the sense that you belong to him. You don’t belong to anyone else, your face of sadness? He’s the only one meant to see them. Your faces of anguish and frustration, he’s the cause of it and he lives for it. You can go ahead and tell someone and they’d respond the same, “Sure Floyd is eccentric but he’s not evil, you sure you’re not just making it up?” Anyone who does believe you aren’t strong enough to go against him. On the yandere scale, he’s a 10/10. He’s dangerous, if you haven’t caught his attention, run. I also want to add, that their S/O is mostly going to become stress relief. They’ll be on edge with any sudden mood shifts because they already know that they’re their go to stress ball. The Leech brothers are not the best, they’re VERY dangerous. 

Jade Leech 

Don’t bother running, you won’t get far. His are manipulative, obsessive, possessive, and sadistic. The issue with Floyd is that he makes his nature apparent, Jade conceals it. Quite frankly, Jade is scarier because he’s unpredictable. He’s seen as a super reliable and respectable person, very professional. The type to take on extra workload if needed but professional enough to stand up and know when to say no. He’s the manipulator of the two, he has a way with words that makes you genuinely think he has your best interests in mind. Masquerading his true intentions behind his smile. 

If you’ve ever seen Drrr!!, he reminds me a lot of Izaya. The type to observe you in difficult situations to see what kind of person you are. How do creatures like you work? What is your design? You’re quite a fascinating subject. He loves to see how you react to any situation. He’s quite obsessive, he wants to know anything and all there has to do regarding you. Often stalking you or inviting you out to the monstro lounge to observe you. Down to how you hold your glass he’s invested. He knows your likes and dislikes, your phobias, your friends,  your social life, and what goes down at your dorm. He needs to know after all to create your life trials. 

He’s possessive. Unlike Floyd, he lets others do the tormenting for him. Though he still believes your expressions are his alone, he would rather stay in the shadows to keep up his reliable facade a bit more. You’re his, he doesn’t like sharing and Jade makes that quite clear. The moment anybody wishes to get close to you he’d get rid of them. Either feeding them lies about you or simply scaring them away. He’s sadistic, he wants to hit you where it hurts. While Floyd prefers physical pain, Jade prefers mental pain. He enjoys the little things that bring you anguish. The betrayal of a friend, watching everyone turns against you, rumors destroying what little reputation you have left leaving Jade as your only companion. 

To add more to both, they see their S/O as a form of entertainment. They have no means of leaving you or letting you leave. The only way I can see their S/O leaving is if they got too boring. They stopped fighting. They no longer had any fight left in their eyes but while Floyd would be the first one to suggest leaving you, I think Jade would still find use. They want to light the spark. The torment stops, even for a while and you suddenly think all your efforts have paid off. Finally, they lost interest but what a scary sight it is to see them waiting for you ready to continue their torment. As far as the yandere scaling, I say Jade is an 11/10. Floyd is a danger, yes, but you already know he is. Jade hides that part of himself until he’s ready. You won’t know when he’ll strike. Both are true to their nature, suffocating. Their presence alone makes you stop breathing, they’re just too much and at some point, you start to think that maybe it was better if you met the eyes of somebody else. 

[sugarandspice-games]

Satan with an MC with a Seizure/Fainting Disorder

I’d like to preface this by stating that I did research disorders that can cause seizures and fainting, and since there are multiple disorders and multiple types of seizures and the anon did not specify which one, I made the decision to leave the MC’s disorder to be up to interpretation rather than centering it around one specific disorder, and I will stick to describing the most common symptoms. Instead, I want to focus more on the first aid and caring aspect (which I have actually received formal training in~), since the anon stated that it helps when someone is there to care for them. However, please keep in mind that I am not a professional, and I only have limited resources at my disposal. If there are any inaccuracies or anything that offends anyone, you are free to address it and correct me. I will not take offense, and I will do my best to follow up on any suggestions.

[TW: Descriptions of an MC having a seizure]

You and Satan were on a date in the botanical gardens when it happened. He took you to the section where they stored strange plants from the human world, knowing you had been feeling homesick and feeling that it would be good to expand his knowledge of human flora. You were giggling at an odd-looking plant called a Fairy Trap Orchid when you wrinkled your nose.

“It kinda smells bad... are you sure they’re not really dead fairies?” you asked playfully.

Satan quirked an eyebrow at you, confused.

“They’re not supposed to have any odor... This is a flower from the human world, not the Devildom.”

Your laughing expression fell. You were smelling things that weren’t there... You realized that your stomach felt weak and fluttery. Something felt horribly wrong, and you understood the feeling all too well.

“Satan, I think--”

Suddenly, you lost the ability to speak, your mouth unable to form the words that you wanted to tell him so desperately before you lost consciousness.

“MC?! MC! What’s going on?!”

You swayed on your feet, and Satan managed to catch you before you fell to the ground. He had read about seizures before, enough to recognize that this was one, and recalled the appropriate first aid measures. He eased you into the soft grass on your side before taking off his jacket to rest it under your head. You had been wearing a scarf around your neck, so he untied the knot before laying it on the ground.

And oh-- watching you jerk around painfully rent his heart to pieces, even if he convinced himself long ago that he was born without one. He wanted nothing more than to hold you close and tell you that it would be alright, but he knew restraining you in any way would only cause you to hurt yourself, and you couldn’t hear him no matter what he said.

So instead, he just sat by your side and waited for the seizure to pass. It only lasted for two minutes, but those minutes felt so much longer than they were. It seemed to take even longer for you to wake up and become aware of your surroundings, and he worried that you might never wake up again, or look at him with those dazzling eyes and that beautiful smile, that face that gave his world color and light and soothed the ever-burning fire in his heart.

When you finally came to, slowly taking in the scenery and the worried face of your demon lover, Satan slid closer to you and gently tugged you into his lap.

“MC... What happened to you? Are you hurt?”

“Nnn... one question... at a time,” you groan, “Did I...?”

“Yes, it appears that you had a seizure,” he explains, “How long have you had this disorder? I had no idea.”

“You wouldn’t know... I usually take medicine for it, but I think I forgot...” You trailed off for a bit, snuggling against him.

“Were you scared?” he asked.

“A little... I’m usually alone when these episodes happen. I’m glad you were there, though, you knew just what to do.”

He stroked your hair as if soothing an injured kitten, and let you cling to him for comfort as you sat amongst the flowers. The whole time he spoke to you in a soothing voice, softer than the wind that rustled the petals.

“I love you, MC. Everything is going to be alright... You don’t have to live in fear of your episodes anymore. I’ll do some reading and research to expand my knowledge on this subject, so I’ll know how to care for you and be there for you each and every time they happen. You’ll never be alone in this again. I promise.”

You rest like that until you have the strength to get up. He walks you back to the House of Lamentation, draping you over his shoulder despite the insistence that you can walk on your own. Not wanting to leave you alone for the rest of the night, he brings some of his books to your room and reads to you until you fall asleep.

After that, he made good on his promise to you, reminding you to take your medicine when you forgot, researching your disorder and the proper care for it, and even educating some of the others on your condition so they could help you when he wasn’t around. He explained why you couldn’t do certain exercises, watch certain movies or play certain games, and even though the others took awhile, they eventually understood and accommodated you. He wouldn’t have anything less.

After all, what use was his knowledge if it couldn’t be used to help the person he loved the most?

[neednothavehappenedtobetrue]

okay. this is a post about a new character, who is a person in the same 'verse as the main one for Robert and Isabelle, sci-fi and spaceships. she is a pastor in the one specific "limits on technology" religion I made up, but also, she is very cool. she does not live on their main terraformed colony, she lives in another colony with some definite cultural differences.

I am mostly posting this for my own future reference. there are definitely people who will enjoy Gwendolyn a lot, even with the extensive trigger tag situation here, but I think "a short story that has space for more nuance" would be a better venue for her than "my thoughts from Skype at 4AM"

if you do decide to read this, check the tags first, please

shoutout to @anonymus-maximus-er for being my thought partner on this.

but as I understand it now, there are, like , degrees of Intensity in Church Of Man

like, even their chillest followers are kind of intense about it because it's hard to be real, real chill about "god said we were only allowed to use these specific fifteen technologies" or whatever the exact rules are

but as far as incubators go, Aimee's community, the one you saw, would definitely have been like "well, too bad God wants that baby to die" and there are some other communities which would be more like "okay, probably make sure your baby does not die, do what you've gotta do there, but don't come back and talk to us afterwards"

and also for sure there are communities like "do literally whatever you have to do to make sure your baby does not die, we will be here with whole-made casseroles when you're home again"

and like, could some of those kids have benefitted from subsequent quality-of-life stuff they didn't get? probably, yes

to varying degrees

but hopefully Aimee finds a nice community where she can be like "this is so important to me but my babies and I experienced a bunch of technology in order to not die and we got excommunicated."

and they're like "wow that sounds like a lot of Not Your Fault would you like some whole-made casseroles and toddler clothes?"

and she's like "I got excommunicated" and they're like "did you know, perhaps you didn't, that there is no Central Authority for every Church Of Man church in the galaxy? there for sure is not! the people from New Maryland often pretend they are, but we didn't vote for them! your old pastor is just not at all the boss of us, is the thing"

that is the future epilogue I want for Aimee

I feel like the Tau Ceti Church of Man community is small and some people think they're weird, but they're nice neighbors. their pastor is a woman named Gwendolyn or something who is just constantly mad about Richard Brinton That Fucking Asshole

she has never called him any of those words because of decorum, she has just spent a lot of time talking to new people like "wow you seem very traumatized did you know he is not the boss of us?"

"we don't have a pope!"

"we've tried to have a council a few times, but it's logistically complicated"

"every church is supposed to make its own rules in accordance with the texts"

"yes, I have read every single one of his missives to the world, I know which bits of the Texts you probably have memorized, here are some bits I like a lot"

Gwendolyn has some opinions

like, churches are supposed to set their own rules about "necessary" technologies and she has quietly labeled almost all life-saving medical technology "necessary"

meanwhile, Brinton thinks it's necessary for him to have access to telecommunications equipment to he can send his editorials all over the galaxy, so people can be Educated

huh

of course, he does not actually physically touch the telecommunications equipment, he keeps like four people who know how to use it around so they can spread his word, but also, huh

the thing about Gwendolyn is that she has spent a long time watching traumatized New Marylanders join her community, many of them quite young and quite traumatized

also, she was never a New Marylander, she is fourth-generation Tau Ceti, which, crucially

means that her first set of principles is "Church Stuff, Misc" and her second set of principles, right there after the first is "you're not the boss of me"

even if somebody could point to actual scripture that said they were the boss of her, she would have some trouble with it, but some dude! who cannot point to anything at all! no justification whatsoever! nothing in the texts even a little bit! keeps trying to be the boss of her! and also keeps traumatizing all of the people in his community pretty badly! and making everyone else look like jerks!

"I'm more conservative than you, therefore, I am the boss of you"

NOPE

not for Gwendolyn

Gwendolyn votes in every local election and votes for her Senator, who she has met and quite likes. she occasionally goes to protests when the local government does some dipshit thing, but the Tau Ceti local government is pretty well-behaved because if it's not the citizenry will absolutely be like "fuck you, you're not the boss of me" at its government

she has some Very Big Opinions about debtor employment. she's not thrilled about the like, severity of the gang situation in her city, but she doesn't have a lot of optimism that the Government is gonna fix it, so she does community groups instead

also, in recognition of the fact that she can't just throw these traumatized New Marylanders right off into the personal autonomy deep end she is like "okay, if you need someone to tell you what to do sometimes, I will be the temporary boss of you until you are ready to be the boss of you"

she does not Love that aspect of her job, but sometimes you gotta

you can't bring people from "obedience all the time" to "you must make every choice in your life with no backup" overnight, they'll just collapse in on themselves or become targets for worse people

so she does the thing

she and Brinton have a <very> passive aggressive correspondence going as church leaders

there are many many long letters back and forth

they are very polite and also, if any of them are preserved, historians will find them fascinating

"wow these people just fucking loathed each other"

Anonymus, 5:05 AM

your obedient servant, A. Burr

5:05 AM

if they did not live on separate planets, legitimately maybe

like, if she could get to Brinton's house on a horse to yell at him in person, she would have by now

she didn't swear a lot in real life, but sometimes she wanted to

she got real good at saying "that man" or "sugar" or "nonsense" in A Tone, but you could tell

I can't decide if she has a husband or a wife

Aimee's church definitely thinks gay people are Modern and therefore Wrong, but like

I feel like probably their specific religious texts don't even have that much on being nice to people? like, there's definitely a few pages on like "kindness is an ancient value, we hold fast to ancient values, these are them"

but it's like 70% Rules Minutiae

it's also not a super long book

so everybody has very different opinions about how to interpret the Rules Minutiae in light of the 30% of the book that's like "here are our actual values"

"modesty" and "fidelity" are both in the Ancient Values bits for sure

and I feel like different denominations went in different directions on the "modesty" and "fidelity" implications of "gay people"

no, I've decided, Gwendolyn definitely has a wife

show her in the actual rules where she can't have a wife

yes, fidelity, that thing she has with her wife

Anonymus, 5:13 AM

can the wife be a very proper rebbetzin?

organises all the casserole chains

5:14 AM

yes, she can definitely organize all of the casserole chains

5:18 AM

right

Gwendolyn's wife's name is Tara and she came from an Earth Church of Man community where they were like "technically it's not illegal for you to be gay, but, like, ehhhh? we'd rather you didn't and also you definitely cannot have children if you're gay"

5:20 AM

and she got to Tau Ceti and met Gwendolyn who even in college was like "show me in the texts where it says I cannot have a wife."

"show me."

Anonymus, 5:21 AM

sounds like excellent breeding ground for Very Textually and Theologically Conversant, but not actually a religious authority

5:21 AM

the thing is, Tau Ceti is Bad At Authority

if they had a motto on their coins it would just be "you're not the boss of me" but maybe in Latin

but maybe not even in Latin because people who know Latin often think they are the boss of you

Anonymus, 5:22 AM

WHO MADE U KING

5:22 AM

for real

I think there is a dude who is technically the "boss" of Gwendolyn and they take turns giving the sermons and calibrating which parishoners they support based on like, communication styles in a way that often ends up with just all of the women and queer folks being Gwendolyn's people

she is smarter than him, he handles all of the Local Politics things that require you not to go "EXCUSE me, where is the LAW ABOUT THAT"

Anonymus, 5:24 AM

different type of smart

5:24 AM

if he ever tried to pull rank on her, she would either be so startled that it would work or she would unhinge her jaw and eat him

so he's never tried

he doesn't want to! very few people on Tau Ceti even want to be in charge, both because it's like herding cats who will hate you if they catch you herding them and because the finely honed distrust of authority doesn't go away when you become authority

Anonymus, 5:26 AM

"I'm pretty sure I'm up to some bullshit"

5:27 AM

yeah, Gwendolyn spends a lot of time with these sad transplants from other communities, nearly all of them women (because for SOME REASON women tend to get excommunicated WAY MORE OFTEN. HUH. are there ADDITIONAL RULES for WOMEN? I DON'T SEE ANY)

and they're like "please I am so sad and scared just tell me what to do"

and she wants to be like "I am not the boss of you, you have to be the boss of you" but they often are not ready for that, so she just tries to get a sense of what they want to do or what might be healthiest for them and tells them her strong recommendation is that they do that thing

everyone in her community knows she is passionate and can get fired up about some of this stuff, she doesn't hide that, but also, there are some conversations she (a only has with her wife and also (b has had with her wife a number of times

they are basically "our community is like 55% traumatized exiles from other communities and like 30% traumatized people from This One Dude's Community specifically. he traumatizes women and girls and girls he calls women and gay people and parents with sick babies!"

"we have so so many people we take care of now who are so so shaken and traumatized and sad"

"and we only get the people who don't leave the faith entirely!"

"it's not fair! it's not fair that he gets to do that! it's not fair!"

because when you carry the faces of like twenty good people all traumatized by the same garbage person and all you can do is try to take care of them and send passive-aggressive letters, sometimes it sucks!

if they lived on the same planet and she could get there on a horse, she would have done something ill-advised by now. yelled, certainly

but then again, if she had been born on New Maryland she would be a super different person and if he had been born on Tau Ceti there would have been a hard upper limit on how much he could get anyone to listen to him

like, bad bullshit happens on Tau Ceti, but the first time he married a fourteen-year-old girl off to her rapist, his neighbors would have set him on fire

church of man neighbors, regular neighbors, possibly neighbors who are criminals, just all the neighbors

5:37 AM

so her wife listens to her cry and reads over her letters to Brinton to make sure she doesn't actually say anything Too Impolitic (I think her boss also reads them, but he's less invested)

and her wife has these new folks over for dinner and helps them find clothes for their kids and adapt their modesty rules to the thing where it's like, as hot as it is possible to be in Tau Ceti

5:38 AM

like, most of the summer it's like 120 degrees, on a brisk day in December it drops into like, the low nineties

5:39 AM

sometimes people from other communities are like "we do modesty more modestly than they do" and they have to be like "okay, your choices are us dressing this way or us using air conditioning, because people do die in real life of heatstroke sometimes, that is a thing that can kill you"

also, even before Gwendolyn came along, her previous pastor was definitely like "we're gonna make electric fans permissible. we're just... heatstroke sure does kill you in real life"

"particularly in Modest Dress"

she liked him. they had meetings like twice a month when she was young because she had A Lot of questions and her parents were less invested in the answers than she was

when she was like twelve, he was like "maybe they'll give you my job one day" and she was like "I don't want your job! you're the boss of people!" and he was like "they very much would not give you my job if you wanted my job, kiddo"

(even 50% of the organized crime leaders on Tau Ceti are like "hey, I'm not the boss of anybody, I'm just a guy you don't want to fuck with because of all of the friends that I have got"

"I am not the boss of you, but I do have this gun")

5:49 AM

final thought on Gwendolyn: she had a real hard time when Robert Thompson died, because that dude thought her faith was a good reason to murder a husband and father.

and like, that dude is a fucking asshole, obviously, but it's hard

and then Brinton puts out an editorial about it and it is the only time Gwendolyn and Tara's children ever hear one of their mothers swear

because she is usually super meticulous about that

but also, sometimes

there is a limit

she makes several attempts before she writes him her next letter and the subtext of the entire letter is just "fuck you SO much, I do not generally believe in Hell, however, I will make an exception"

there is a limit! a man is dead and his wife and daughter are grieving and then a dude who everyone thinks is, like, the pope of her puts out some bullshit like "of course we don't do hate crimes but also that dude who got murdered deserved it" bullshit

there is a limit she is past it!

5:53 AM

also, they have seven adopted kids

[g-perla]

The ACOTAR Series is a Romantic/Gothic Horror Stage and Only Nesta Got the Memo

Not even SJM knows what’s going on.

Ok, this is going to seem off the rails but bear with me.

So I'm a big fan of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (top 5 books and all that jazz) and I was thinking about it because it deals with themes of the Other and the supernatural, Nature as Character, the overlap of the animalistic and human, blurring of established binaries...fun, Romantic shit like that. Interestingly, this overlaps with how SJM illustrates her world and characters a lot of the time, hence why I was considering it while working on my Nesta project. I’ve mentioned before that Nesta really gives me Byronic heroine vibes and that’s a character construct of precisely this literary tradition.

I started thinking about Heathcliff and Cathy and how they're ridiculously extra and just feel the most intense emotions towards each other but also towards literally everything (nothing half-assed ever, this is a Romantic novel after all). I then remembered how so many people ship them, but like in earnest, in a totally aspirational way. It's not a #cursed ship to them at all. It's...romantic to them not Romantic. I even read often that people quote it at their weddings, specifically the infamous "two souls" quote.

Then I had an epiphany. I was like "wait, what if SJM is one of those people?? What if she has the energy of a Cathy/Heathcliff earnest shipper and that's why all her ships are messy??" Because if that is the case, my friends, oh boy oh boy would it explain so much. I will post some sections from Wuthering Heights:

Doesn’t the acotar series seem like a 1/50 dilution of that energy?? And that is barely a taste of all the spiciness this book has to offer. To illustrate further: SJM gave us the F/eysand suicide pact and the near-death battlefield Nessian scene. One is certainly more outlandish than the other, but both are the result of intense emotions. To that Emily Brontë raises the following: Heathcliff asking the sexton to dig up Cathy’s grave to see what’s up because her ghost has been haunting him since he personally dug up her grave 18 years prior and she has been haunting him ever since. He later demands to be buried in the same exact grave when he dies so they can decompose together. They both married other people though which only adds to the mess. (I am not lying to you the Romantic tradition really gave us these gems lmao. As an aside, Mary Shelley was also a writer of the Romantic tradition and she confessed her love to husband Percy Bysshe Shelley on her mother’s grave. Her mother was liberal feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft by the way which only makes this even more amazing. Additionally, biographers believe that the Shelleys also had sex there. Talk about Romantic 😉.)

Then I had ANOTHER thought! (Dangerous)

If we read the series from the point of view of just another YA high fantasy things might get a bit boring because the world-building is honestly lazy and the magic system is pretty soft, which isn’t a pre-requisite in high fantasy (The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system) but it's not the norm and it doesn't pay off in this series. Not to mention that the plot is pretty lackluster and derivative. To add to that the romantic and sexual relationships are questionable in their healthiness and consequently are the source of much argument in the fandom. 

But, dear reader, if we think about the ACOTAR series as being a sort of thematic and ideological 21st century YA homage to the Romantic tradition of the 19th century (within which Gothic Horror also lives), things get REALLY, REALLY SPICY.

No longer do we just have a romance fantasy with messy, hyper-emotional, animalistic characters who constantly partake in morally grey situations rife with dubious dynamics. No longer does plot really matter. No longer do we require quasi-scientific descriptions of the world and the magical system. No! All that matters now are the characters and the mood. Now we have potential! Add a lot of Nature ambiance: expanses of dark woods, great mountains, the unknowable and sublime energy of the ocean, a violent rainstorm/hurricane/tsunami, an impending snowstorm whose intensity reflects the growing emotional intensity of the characters as the story goes along (I’m looking at you impending snowstorm in acofas that curiously matches the growing complexity of Nesta’s emotional state). Blur the lines between any imaginable category: life and death, human and animal, known and unknown, Self and Other, beautiful and monstrous, good and evil, masculine and feminine, the list goes on. Most importantly make your readers uncomfortable by frustrating their desires to sort things into easy binary categories and don’t apologise for making them question their assumptions about the world, morality, gender, and any other kind of previously constructed Order. 

Basically write the story with Dionysus-in-a-Greek-tragedy energy and bring to us mere mortals artful Chaos.

Once that is done we can have a literal Romantic/Gothic Horror story.  The Acotar series could have been this unapologetically, with the added element of being told through the eyes of the "Cathy" character instead of through the lens of a third person getting second-hand accounts about what went on. This whole series is honestly enough of a chaotic mess of Byronic-like heroes and heroines and cursed familial relationships that it could have been that. That alone is peak entertainment. The problem, however, and the main reason why I can’t really say that this series truly delivered this wackiness is that SJM committed the act of not fully committing to the bit (very un-Romantic of her, I know). Now, I am not saying that SJM actually intended this. I’m just saying it really could have accidentally been this genius with some tweaks. Unfortunately, she made the crucial mistake of trying to justify too much, trying to make things too neat, too tidy, too sensical (in other words: the reason we really can’t have nice things). 

I could end this here, lamenting the potential of what SJM had set-up for us were it not for one element, one gift:

Nesta 

OHOHOHO DO THINGS GET GOOD HERE SO BUCKLE UP

Most of the characters refuse to fully commit to the bit in their desire to satisfy modern sensibilities, by which I of course mean they want ridiculous things like political power, to conquer lands, to be a Girl Boss, to get married, have kids, celebrate holidays, converse about mundane things, be relatable, etc. You know, pretty pedestrian stuff that only requires a bit of genetic luck, a sprinkle of energy, and the right circumstances within the world of Acotar. I would like to reiterate the beginning of this paragraph: most of the characters. 

Let’s say you’re stubborn and you decide to still read the series through the lens of the Romantic/Gothic tradition, what happens then? 

The most hilarious thing (for the Nesta stans that is. The antis would probably hate this)

Nesta, based on what we know about her through Feyre and the limited amount of other scenes, is the only character who really takes the performance seriously. She's the only one that SJM hasn't managed to confine through justification. Nesta just shows up and simply refuses to make sense (her POWER what a queen 👑). She is endlessly fascinating because she just exists in her world on her terms, established categories be damned, and in this manner she frustrates not only the sensibilities of the characters in the stories but those of the reader as well. This double duty is, I suggest, the result of the other characters not fully inhabiting the nebulous world of Romantic characters and thus being a little too plausible and understandable even if they are not justifiable. 

Ok, you may say, but I relate so much to Nesta. I do understand her. I don’t justify all of her actions, but I understand where she is coming from. (You’re not alone, friend. I like to think these things too. Alas, we are but plebs).

To that I reply; Nesta does things, certainly, and we can spend hours trying to explain through extrapolation, educated guesses, and personal experience why she did those things, but the fact is we really don't know why. We are never explicitly told. Our insight into who she is and her motivations comes predominantly from the understanding of her youngest sister and from our own interpretation of the actions she takes. I must make clear that our own interpretations are rooted in pre-established assumptions about what is sensical and orderly in our own world and in our own lives. We cannot interpret with the tools available to us that which may be, by definition, unfathomable. It is simply paradoxical. Nesta, as we currently know her, is a construct derived from a limited number of scenes and our interpretations and projections of these scenes. Even the scenes where we get third person narration don’t explicitly tell us her motivations and her logic. For all we know there really is no comprehensible reason for her actions and that is endlessly amusing to me in how utterly Romantic it is. Acosf may and likely will change this of course, but as it stands, Nesta is a whole Romantic character. Her divisiveness in fandom and in the narrative could be due in part to her refusal to fit the discrete categories available in her world and ours. 

Isn’t that wonderful?

To illustrate this a bit more I will share some details SJM gives us about her/ elements she sets up that fit in with the characteristics of the Romantic tradition (these are not exhaustive by any means):

The absolute pettiness (and extra-ness) of being so angry at her father’s inaction that she is willing to starve to death to see if he does something.

How in Acowae she is described as shifting between emotions as if she were changing clothes and feeling everything too strongly (probably to the point of destruction)

She is constantly being compared to animals, even when she is still human. Granted, SJM compares everyone to animals, but that strengthens the blurring of lines between usually discrete categories. It is still most powerful when used as a comparison when she is human because it dehumanises Nesta.

Often, SJM describes her characters as forces. Forces of nature, for example. Acofas is full of details like this in relation to Nesta. There is a storm brewing leading up to the solstice party and it is in full swing when she arrives at the townhouse. The language used there suggests that Nesta herself may be the storm (against the onslaught of Nesta). It really adds to the Maleficent energy tbh.

She is often associated with death post her transformation

She is Other even to Others. She was Made like Elain, Feyre, and Amren in a sense, but the process of her specific transformation differentiates her greatly from the others. As it is, she doesn’t fit in anywhere

Her intense attachment to her femininity and its expression are at odds with the ideas and assumptions about the performance of womanhood and a woman’s role in her world and even in ours. She is unapologetically feminine in her physical presentation, but her character, her thoughts, and possibly even desires transgress the unwritten rules of acceptable femininity (unfortunately there still are abject expressions of femininity in our ‘”progressive” mileux

She displays in many of her actions a disrespect towards authority and to the status quo. This is particularly notable when her intensely polarised sense of right and wrong is aggravated.

Her self-destructiveness. This is referred to most strongly in Acofas, but I would say she was remarkably blasé about self-preservation in Acowar as well

She is described as intelligent, cunning, ruthless, attractive, and prone to debilitating extremes of emotionality. All of these are characteristics of Byronic heroes, a subtype of the Romantic hero

Here are a bunch of quotes that touch on many of the elements that I have discussed above:

“I looked at my sister, really looked at her, at this woman who couldn’t stomach the sycophants who now surrounded her, who had never spent a day in the forest but had gone into wolf territory...Who had shrouded the loss of our Mother, then our downfall, because the anger had been a lifeline, the cruelty a release. But she had cared--beneath it she had cared, and perhaps loved more fiercely than I could comprehend, more deeply and loyally.” 

--Acotar, emphasis mine, note the strong emotions. This is a recurring element for Nesta.

“Cassian’s face went almost feral. A wolf who had been circling a doe...Only to find a mountain cat wearing its hide instead.” 

--Acomaf, animal comparison

“Nesta is different from most people,” I explained. “She comes across as rigid and vicious, but I think it’s a wall. A shield--like the ones Rhys has in his mind.” “Against what?” “Feeling. I think Nesta feels everything--sees too much; sees and feels it all. And she burns with it. Keeping that wall up helps from being overwhelmed, from caring too greatly.”

--Acomaf, emphasis mine

“I knew that she was different [...] Nesta was different [...] as if the Cauldron in making her...had been forced to give more than it wanted. As if Nesta had fought after she went under, and had decided that if she was to be dragged into hell, she was taking the Cauldron with her.”

--Acomaf, Nesta had her own plans for the Cauldron what a queen

“Something great and terrible.”

--Acowar, referring to her eyes. Oooh, spooky Nesta 👻

“The day she was changed, she...I felt something different with her [...] like looking at a house cat and suddenly finding a panther standing there instead.”

--Acowar, a two in one here: difference + animal comparison. Boy does SJM really go heavy when establishing Nesta as Other.

“‘Not in flesh, not in the thing that prowls beneath our skin and bones...’ Amren’s remarkable eyes narrowed. ‘But...I see the kernel, girl.’ Amren nodded, more to herself than anyone. ‘You did not fit--the mold that they shoved you into. The path you were born upon and forced to walk. You tried, and yet you did not, could not fit. And then the path changed.’ A little nod. ‘I know--what it is to be that way. I remember it, long ago as it was.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’“

--Acowar, show don’t tell gets thrown out the window here, but it is useful for the present purposes

“What if I tell you that the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something--something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth. What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?

What came out was not what went in [...] How lovely she is, new as a fawn and yet ancient as the sea. How she calls to you. A queen as my sister once was. Terrible and proud; beautiful as a winter’s sunrise.”

--Acowar, who knew rocks, darkness, and the sea were such gossips, but look how many connections to nature! To be compared to the sea, a significant example of the sublime, is peak Romanticism. If any of you have read Moby Dick, think about what the ocean and the white whale might have represented there and how that might relate to Nesta.

“I think the power is death--death made flesh.”

--Acowar, Feyre referring to the possible nature of Nesta’s power. Alluding to her powers possibly being related to death is quite significant because that is something most of us cannot comprehend, nor can most of the characters. For Nesta, a “reborn” but very much living character to have death associated with her is a strong blurring of the lines. The case of her being labelled a witch is similarly significant as it solidifies the elements of the supernatural while simultaneously comparing her to pretty much the only exclusively female-coded monster in western pop culture. I will touch more on this when I do my study of Nesta through the framework of Barbara Creed’s Monstrous Feminine.

“I am not like the others.”

--Acowar, we love a self-aware queen.

“Nesta took in his broken body, the pain in Cassian’s eyes, and angled her head.

The movement was not human.

Not fae.

Purely animal.

Purely predator.”

--Acowar

There are a lot more details and quotes that support this interpretation, but I didn’t write them all down in my archived notes. This post is obscenely long, however, so even though there is more to be said, I’ll leave it for another day. If you made it this far you really are an MVP and probably love Nesta to a concerning degree like me. Please rest your eyes if you’re actually reading this 😂

I’d love to read about any other takes and thoughts that might have come to your minds after reading this monstrosity,

G

[kuvopal]

Kuvira: balance & motivations

... and the future of a Destruct sequel for those that are interested

remember when years ago i wrote a small essay on kuvira’s motivations?? i should’ve published it before the comics came out -_- 

Kuvira was raised in a self-sufficient utopia and wished to extend the security she felt there to other places. Her fatal flaw was that she did not actually feel secure and was not dealing with the trauma she’d experienced as a child when she was cast aside by her parents. She was so wrapped up in obtaining loyalty and power to satisfy what she’d needed as a child that she perverted her goals of preventing the nation as a whole being treated the way she had been. This was because she was never going to be satisfied as long as she didn’t address the real motivation behind her actions, and she became so consumed by her need for power that she was willing to destroy everything and everyone in her path.

The best way we can see this is by holding Suyin as a character foil to her. Most characters in this show can be held as a sort of foil to each other, and they sometimes even talk about it openly as a way to empathize with each other based on similarities. Kuvira and Suyin both sought to create societies they thought would benefit them and their citizens, but Suyin is a wiser and more balanced person. Suyin’s goal was to create a society independent of monarchy where primarily metalbenders, but also people in general, could nourish their gifts. Suyin, unlike Kuvira, did not wish to extend her power passed her own life and those who chose to live with her and actively chose to take part in her society without coercion or threat.

Kuvira viewed Suyin’s abstinence in refusing to become what was basically a new Earth Queen as cowardice. In reality, it was partly Suyin wanting to conserve her way of life (a ‘me-and-mine’ attitude which Kuvira shares) but largely her wisdom in knowing where the road would end if she chose that path. If Suyin was the type of person who would have tried to take control of the conflict and enforce her ideals on an entire nation she would’ve ended up just like Kuvira had. Kuvira began her journey with as good intentions as Suyin, but her intentions converted to excuses with her first taste of the power/support she’d needed as a child.

Kuvira, like all the other villains in TLOK, serves as an example that even pure/harmless ideals can be corrupted under imbalance (in Kuvira’s case: fascism, and fanaticism and hypocrisy in other cases). A metalbending city under a balanced individual turns into a nation where all but metalbenders are used as slave labour, where dissenters are not banished if they threaten security but rather imprisoned (re-education, work camps), where security turns from protecting a way of life from a tyrant (the Earth Queen) to building walls and mobilizing an entire country to protect another one.

When Korra stops Kuvira, she demonstrates to Kuvira that the world is in good hands and that’s a reason why Kuvira surrenders. But Kuvira starts slipping before that when she tries to stop her spirit weapon’s power, to control it, and finds herself unable to. In that moment, she realizes how truly out of control and out of balance she is, as well as possibly why she’d felt the need to exert that power over others, why she was willing to torture and murder others over loyalty. It’s suggested that she thinks about her motivations in the moments afterwards because that’s when she yells at Korra about her family. But I think something’s important about this, and her apology to Suyin later. Something that people in a society who are groomed to romanticize and empathize with oppressive figures might miss.

It doesn’t actually matter. Trauma is valid, but weaponizing trauma is not, and that’s what Kuvira does. She uses her pain as her excuse for her actions, to tell herself that she’s committing atrocities in order to build a strong nation that would never feel the way she’d felt, when in actuality she was only building a strong nation in order to protect herself, inflicting the exact same pain and worse on the citizen’s she’d dehumanized. And at the end of Book 4, despite her surrender, Kuvira is not suddenly in balance or capable of a redemption arc. In fact, there’s no evidence she’s even interested in redemption the way a person who’s committed war crimes should want redemption.

Coming back to Suyin, how does Kuvira apologize the one time she apologizes? She doesn’t apologize for the people she’s killed, the people she’s forced to work as slaves, the people she’s threatened and tortured. The only family among the hundreds that she’s torn apart that she deigns to apologize to is Suyin’s. Kuvira is still not balanced, at the end of the day she is still limited to herself and the people she deems relevant to her - the Beifongs who took her in (whether you interpret that as adoption or just letting her into Zaofu). Suyin on the other hand, while not a perfect person has lived a long life and is someone much more balanced and at peace with herself, does not accept Kuvira’s feelings. Rather, she grounds Kuvira to the larger apology Kuvira has to make, to all the people Kuvira’s wronged, that Kuvira will pay for all she’s done including crimes Kuvira shows no evidence she’s interested in atoning for. Suyin sees the bigger picture, but Kuvira is still limited by herself and by her experiences and her ideals (as were the other villains).

I find it very easy to rationalize character motivations because it’s one way I cope with atrocities and irrationalities, I attempt to understand why a human would make a choice and I choose not to. But the key is, as it will always be, choice. We can always choose. So I find it difficult to ‘choose’ to expend energy on writing on understanding a fascist beyond my need to understand fascists as a mechanism of my predicting their behaviour and humanizing them so that they are not a supernatural monster lurking in the shadows  my bed but something that can bleed like me. The point is, at the end of Book 4, Kuvira is still a mass murderer. If Korra wasn’t strong enough to stop her, Kuvira literally would have kept going enslaving and murdering people seeking more and more power until she killed herself (literally. Korra saving Kuvira from herself was Kuvira’s turning point). And Kuvira’s still a fascist.

Kuvira is a fascist despite our interest or investment in her character. Most importantly, she’s demonstrated no interest in changing her views, or any remorse for the harm she’s inflicted on anyone not directly related to her. We can’t give a redemption arch to someone who doesn’t want one and keep their characterization intact. We cannot ‘save’ fascists, and I think entertaining thoughts of redemption for fascists in this current world we live in, and fuck it ALL worlds that have ever been or will be, is dangerous. Humanizing an unrepentant fascist and attempting to ‘bring her back to the light’ is something I view as an inherently abusive and futile exercise. So I find it difficult that I will be able to write Kuvira/Opal fic until either Kuvira has undergone cannon growth or until fascism has been eradicated. whichever comes first. At any rate I hope whoever reads this essay will consider reading Kuvira a little more in depth, whether or not they like her character.

Edit: my views have changed somewhat w.r.t. someday writing a Destruct sequel, because prior to the comics I felt like people were too willing to forgive Kuvira. Little did I know that the person most willing to forgive her and swipe her crimes under the rug was one of the several LOK writers (the only way I can justify what happened is by reminding myself that DiMartino only wrote 3 of the Book 4 episodes, only one of which really had anything to do with Kuvira). As such, I feel more comfortable cracking my knuckles and writing her ‘redemption arc’ the right way - aka holding her accountable. And Opal is honestly the best character to do this. Anyway :) I feel pretty invigorated about someday writing a Destruct sequel, because for awhile there I was really not into it because of the above reasons. Ironically, it’s the state of the comics that pushed me there. Probably what I’ll do is retcon the last chapter/epilogue of Destruct, change some of Kuvira’s background (aka probably not go with my headcanon but also not make Kuvira a literal adoptive sibling to her future fiance (or Opal lmao)), and continue onwards with the plot itself (though I’m still not going to reinstate the monarchy @ michael dante dimartino what were you thinking man??????? Oh NOW we’re going to be realistic about political upheaval?? in the world with brainwashing tinfoil hats?? just say you’re voting Biden and go).

[ma9l]

Research Project: Instagram Use and Depression

It’s fascinating. Isn’t it fascinating? What our world has become? The world is so different now compared to even a couple hundred years ago. It has advanced--especially when it comes to technology and the internet. Think about it. Social media used to be non-existent. Now it is booming with billions of users. This is proof that people are entertained by these types of platforms. However, aside from all their pros, they also hold many faults. For example, a survey (#StatusOfMind survey) was published in 2017 by the Royal Society for Public Health. They discovered that “Out of five social networks included in the survey, YouTube received the highest marks for health and well being and was the only site that received a net positive score by respondents. Twitter came in second, followed by Facebook and then Snapchat—with Instagram bringing up the rear.” Basically, Instagram was ranked as the worst social media for mental health. Although some may believe that Instagram doesn’t pose any issues, depression and Instagram actually share correlations. I believe the way Instagram is used plays a role in one’s well being and that symptoms of depression can arise if users are not careful. The world has enough issues, mental health being one of the most serious with the increase in suicides over more recent years. If we determine whether or not social media (particularly Instagram) is a contributor to depression, we could potentially end the epidemic, or at least avoid making things worse.

In the past, I would normally go about my research by googling and trying to find reliable sources that way. Usually this would present decent info, but hardly ever would it be in-depth. When I took ENGL 1010 last year, I was informed that my school’s library had a website full of databases holding a plethora of scholarly articles. My mind was blown. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but as I became familiar with the tools and resources, I learned how to properly navigate and refine my searches to produce the results I was looking for. I didn’t use the databases as effectively as I could have, but this year in ENGL 2010, I was encouraged to and I learned a lot more about how to read and interpret the articles to find relevant information. I did this by closely studying the abstract, methods, and results sections. Google searches aren’t necessarily bad. In fact, they can be used to compare and contrast with scholarly articles in order to find similarities and differences. I have also been told to use outside sources like physical books and newspapers or to try and perform my own research by creating a survey or poll. Overall, I am pleased with my education in research and feel that it has been and will be very beneficial for assisting me in my writing.

Before doing any research, I had a preconceived idea that Instagram was bad, but the more I looked into it, the more my opinion shifted from believing Instagram itself is unhealthy to believing the users of Instagram are the ones creating unhealthy habits. I came to this conclusion by reading various articles in relation to this topic and assessing my personal Instagram use.

One of the articles I read was “Instagram: Friend or Foe”. It revolves around a study from 2017 where 204 participants ages 18-48 were recruited through social media where the study was advertised. They were asked to complete an online survey regardless of whether or not they had an Instagram account. Authors actually hoped some wouldn’t so they could compare results between users and nonusers. Throughout the survey, participants (users only) were measured on seven things: anxiety, depression, loneliness, self-esteem, body image, social comparison, and time spent on Instagram. Using number scales, they would rank how they felt based on each category. In short, the authors’ hypotheses were correct for all but two of these categories: body image and social comparison where there was no significant difference between users and nonusers of Instagram. What surprised me most from the results was that those who had an Instagram account were less depressed than those who did not. I thought it would be the opposite, but I guess a reason for this could be because Instagram allows you to feel included and not so lonely with all the social interaction that goes on. “Contrary to expectation, Instagram anxiety was significantly, negatively associated with depression in this analysis. In addition, time spent , self-esteem, and anxiety were significant predictors of depression. Of note, social comparison was marginally associated with depression in the expected direction”.

The article “Instagram #Instasad?: Exploring Associations Among Instagram Use, Depressive Symptoms, Negative Social Comparison, and Strangers Followed”, held a set of online questionnaires for 117 individuals ages 18-29 who, like the previous study, were also voluntarily recruited through an online post that was shared. The questions asked were based on Instagram use, the number of strangers followed, social comparison, and depressive symptoms. Authors sought to identify the relationship between the different aspects of Instagram use. After completing the questionnaire, the following results were observed:  the more one uses Instagram, the more depressed they are, but only if they follow a large number of strangers, otherwise Instagram and depression were not related. As far as social comparison goes, it was positively associated with greater instagram use meaning social comparison on Instagram is inevitable. Results demonstrated that the social comparison was more positive when users didn’t follow strangers. In conclusion, “people using Instagram or other SNS to keep in touch solely with people they know personally are not at risk for negative consequences. However, following strangers may lead to or reinforce already existing negative feelings about the self by triggering negative social comparisons.”

“Why Social Comparison on Instagram Matters: Its Impact on Depression” by Ha Sung Hwang is all about the relationship between various types of activities on social media that motivate one to participate in social comparisons and how those influence college students’ moods. It specifically focuses on Instagram for the social platform and depression for the mental illness which is exactly what I was looking for in my research. The study was carried out as 245 college students were surveyed on the types of activities they take part in on Instagram and how they felt in doing each of those. Instagram usage, activity, social comparison, and depression were individually measured. Demographics of the participants were also taken into account. The author seemed to be interested in the social comparison theory where there are three different kinds of comparisons: upward, downward, and horizontal. Upward is comparing yourself to someone who appears to be superior to you, downward is comparing yourself to someone who is inferior to you, and horizontal comparison is relating yourself to someone who is equal to you. The results presented three outcomes: “(1) looking at other people's status updates and commenting on other people's photos influences upward social comparison, (2) frequency of Instagram use predicts upward/downward/horizontal social comparison, and (3) upward social comparison was positively associated with depression, while downward social comparison was negatively associated with depression.”

One of the biggest similarities between these three sources is that the participants in each experiment were all college aged. That’s because according to “Instagram: Friend or Foe? The application’s association with psychological well-being”, “Approximately 90% of young adults use social media.” This is significant because you are college-aged and an adult, so these effects couldn’t apply to you more! Each article also agreed that users of Instagram deal with social comparison to some degree each time they interact with the app. Social comparison was measured in every case. The first article confirms that it took place-but they also expected that to happen. Many of us could probably assume the same. Article #2 concludes that social comparisons only have an effect on depression when you follow strangers. Now, because the author in article #3 performed a more specific measurement with her participants, she found that social comparison does contribute to depression, but only when it falls into the upward comparison category. A final similarity amongst these reports is support in the idea that the activities you do on Instagram will determine how depressed you become along with the amount of time you take part in them. Those activities combined include: looking at or commenting on other people’s photos and following strangers. The main difference in the studies was that they each took at least one more thing into account when analyzing what aspects of Instagram play a role in depressed moods. #1 compares users with non users. #2 wonders if gender makes a difference. #3 again, implements the social comparison theory. Limitations inevitably happened which could have hindered results, like how in the third article, the survey only took place at a Korean University. How would the results differ if UVU students took the survey? For the most part, the results were in sync. In summary, all the studies are on the same page when it comes to social comparison and activities on Instagram-believing that they tend to elevate depression. The authors also all realized that college students are most at risk for developing depressive symptoms due to their population’s heavy usage of the network.

I strongly believe that the way individuals use social media has an impact on how they feel. Instagram seems to be a culprit for influencing the rise of many negative feelings with depressive symptoms being some of many. Coincidentally, depression correlates with more frequent Instagram use which presents a predicament we ought to be concerned with because if we don’t pinpoint the epicenter of this relationship, it’s only going to get worse… and depression is going to become even more common than it already is. 

According to an NBC article, Harvard University and the University of Vermont designed a computer program for spotting depressed individuals on Instagram with 70% accuracy. It was programmed to search for certain qualities of their photos in order to determine if someone was depressed or not. “Researchers found depressed individuals posted photos that were bluer, darker and grayer than images posted by others.” (Pawlowski). This demonstrates Instagram being used as an outlet for expressing one’s emotions. Elyse Fox struggled with depression and found relief in sharing her state of mind through this outlet because it helped her get things out of her system. This represents Instagram as a helpful tool. Others might not do it for relief, but simply because they are at an all time low. That’s when it becomes unhealthy and when you would need to reach out to someone you trust for help.

“In several recent studies, teenage and young adult users who spend the most time on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms were shown to have a substantially (from 13 to 66 percent) higher rate of reported depression than those who spent the least time.” This is proof of the correlation taking place.

Some may claim that it’s social media’s fault that people are suffering from mental illnesses. More specifically, that it’s Instagram’s fault if someone that uses it gets depressed. They might say it has nothing to do with the users actions because all of the potential negatives are automatically accessible before them and say that whatever happens is directly caused by the app. The blame is put on a non-living, non-physical, inanimate thing. To our knowledge, Instagram itself is not capable of causing anything. Studies show a correlation, not a causation. However, “One reason the correlation seems more than coincidental is that an increase in depression occurred in tandem with the rise in smartphone use.” (Miller). “By 2015,... 92 percent of teens and young adults owned a smartphone. The rise in depressive symptoms correlates with smartphone adoption during that period.” (Miller). The author of this write-up also mentions that there was a rise in the number of college students visiting counselors for anxiety and depression. Just so you know, UVU has counseling services available on campus if you are seeking further assistance with your mental health. (Student Health Services |(801) 863-8876| Room SC-221).

What should we do about it? What can we do about it? Personally? As a student body? I think it is a very personal issue because everyone has their agency and freedom to do what they want and really, it is up to them to decide how they will spend their time on Instagram. But we can suggest tips for those who are seeking help or for those who don’t realize what’s affecting them and want to change.

In a Ted Talk by Bailey Parnell, she suggests four tips for obtaining social media wellness. These are presented in four steps: 1. Recognize the problem. 2. Audit your social media diet. 3. Create a better online experience. 4. Model good behavior. It’s all about our awareness. If we don’t realize something’s wrong, then we aren’t going to do anything about it. After that, we are able to make adjustments based on our unique needs. For example, we could spend less time on Instagram, unfollow strangers, or make our posts more real and sincere. I, personally, need to work on all of those because I notice a difference between when my time spent on Instagram has been a waste, leaving me drained vs when it’s been productive and I’ve come away feeling enlightened or pleased with my online experience. What I consider to be a waste of time is viewing my followers profiles and engaging in social comparison where I degrade myself and wish my life was like theirs. A more productive way to spend my time would be sharing an uplifting message on my story or reach out to friends I haven’t talked to in a while to see how they are doing.

The United Kingdom’s RSPH had the great idea of teaching safe social media use in schools. (Macmillan). Because of the prevalence of social media today, it needs to be acknowledged and taught proper use. I think all schools should provide a class solely dedicated to teaching social media safety and another for teaching about mental health awareness. Instagram and depression each fall into one of those categories, so it’s perfect. These classes could be held in middle schools, high schools, and colleges since most age groups use some form of social media. I feel like a lot of students would benefit from taking these courses.

Fellow friends (A.K.A. UVU students) if you have been guilty of spending too much time on Instagram, comparing yourself to others, or following celebrities/strangers you hardly know, it’s okay!! So have I. That doesn’t mean you are a bad person, it just means that you are human. Now that you know more about what types of interactions on Instagram can make you depressed, you can choose to be more proactive and reap the rewards of “social media wellness” and obtain the happiness that comes from practicing “safe social.”

To restate my stance one more time, I will just remind you that all the research I have done and knowledge I have gained has led me to believe that Instagram use and depression correlate. Depression isn’t caused by the app, rather depression results from using the app excessively or from comparing oneself to others. I strongly believe that we have a responsibility to monitor and reflect on our Instagram behaviors in order to decrease our chances of being at risk for depression. Making simple changes can alter your perspective on life and bring you more joy. Bailey Parnell says it best: “Is social media hurting your mental health? The answer is: it does not have to.”

Google Slides (in progress): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jJ-aIcZZW0qCJpfWv0-SGCyrAFu7O_eLq34oCXVNsBo/edit?usp=sharing

[sterlingun]

Character: ― Nicholas ‘Nik’ Sterling Faceclaim: ― Theo James Age/Pronouns: ― 33 | he/him Occupation:  ― Lycan Alpha Hometown/District: ― born in Downtown, Houston / lives in Upper Springs, Houston

HEADCANONS

Though there’s no real blood relation between Nik and the old Alpha, over the years spent with the Lycans he’s grown to admire the man and regard him as a father figure he desperately lacked all these years. With the old Alpha growing weaker day after day, eaten away by the illness, Nik is terrified of the thought of losing him too, he still considers him his compass and most trusted adviser.

He still hasn’t given up on searching for his sister - even though the odds are against him, he believes he owes it to her to never stop trying, whether he finds her dead or alive. It’s the only remaining loose end from his youth, when his father was still there to wreak havoc on their lives. 

His brother used to show him card tricks when they were kids, and when he joined the Lycans - he left behind a worn deck of playing cards that Nik is still very attached to. It’s the only physical memory he has of his brother. After that, especially when he was on the run he focused a lot of his efforts on card tricks and learning to cheat his way to a win. It was a way to make money when he was on the run, and you can still see him absentmindedly playing with cards to this day, especially when he’s thinking about something, or something is bothering him. 

He wears black leather gloves a lot, and it’s very rare to see him without them - probably only closest to him have seen him without them. When he was a young boy his father would make him and Ethan hold a scorching hot iron bar to ‘test their durability’. It’s not a fond memory for Nik, and neither are the scars. Besides, he’s worn them so much they’re pretty much a part of his image these days. 

If you’re even remotely familiar with the way he walks, you’ll know he has a very specific gait. He tries to compensate for it, make it seem languid and aloof, but it’s still visible, especially on a bad day. This is the result of the first time he tried to kill his father, when the old bastard left him with torn ligaments and a broken patella. 

He’s got a thing for fast, expensive cars and has a garage by the house filled with whatever he’s passionate about currently. Do not start talking about them, because he won’t ever stop - you’ve been warned. He’s quiet usually, but oh boy this topic is a black hole. 

A bit of pyromaniac, if he can set it on fire and has a reason to - he will. And he prefers matches over lighters when it comes to lighting his cigarettes. He won’t ever admit it, but it’s got a lot to do with how he ended his father’s life. 

Watches are his thing. Majorly. You walk into his closet and there’s an entire section dedicated just to expensive, limited-edition Omegas and Patek Philippes and Piagets and god knows what. He thinks it adds to the whole look, plus to be honest - he’s a nerd about this stuff. Also another topic where you do not want to get him started. 

Likes to read a lot. Even if he had no formal education, you can strike up a conversation with him about pretty much anything from philosophy to literature to technology. I think he kind of values knowledge a lot, and it’s his biggest regret he had no chances to actually study and learn about something. 

His biggest vices are whiskey and cigarettes. You can always see him with one or the other, or both - depends on the situation. 

He has a set of two expensive silver guns that were given to him by the old Alpha and he will protect these things with his life. The story goes that Nik’s mom gave these to the old Alpha for their 10th anniversary, but the old man wanted Nik to have them and to remember that even though she made some bad choices, she did love Nik too. 

He’s got a tattoo on his back that says ‘Death before dishonor’ and on his chest a tattoo mimicking a scar from tiger’s claws hides a bullet wound he’d received fighting his father. There’s some small silvery scars on his back, he’s had them since childhood and isn’t too keen on discussing them. 

100% blames himself for losing his sister and the death of his girlfriend, he can’t be reasoned with when it comes to these topics, and even though he won’t admit it - he still has nightmares about both, as well as the death of his brother .You could probably classify him as a chronic insomniac, but try convincing him of that...  

WANTED CONNECTIONS

The Sister - She’s someone he’s lost a long time ago, and he never quite forgave himself for letting their father take her away. He’s spent the years since she’s been gone actively searching for her, either himself or through other means. I feel like he thinks of her as this pure thing from his childhood, untainted by their father because she was kept protected by their mother from young age. I think it’s a complicated relationship, because long ago he probably resented her for being their mother’s first choice while he was left behind, but there’s too much love there to truly ever allow himself to feel that. He wants to find her, but he’s terrified of what life has done to her innocence and well-being, and even more terrified that she’s died along the way because he wasn’t capable of finding her.

The Brother/Sister in Arms - Someone he connected with when he first joined the Lycans. It could either be someone who was suspicious of him at first, or someone who accepted him right away. I think it would make an interesting dynamic either way. Because it was tough for him at first, he was used to being alone and completely incapable of trusting anyone, a bit too familiar with violence given his age, had connections to the Reapers (even though he was obviously against them) etc. So he either butted heads with this person at first or he was trying to shoo them away because they attempted to reach out to him. But now he appreciates that they stuck around through thick and thin and they’re one of those rare people he’d trust with his life. Either male or female I think it could work either way I’d just be super excited to see this happen!

The Ex-brother/sister-in-law - Okay this is something I would love to see happen. Nik blames himself majorly for his late girlfriend’s death, because he pulled her into this life and refused to let go because he’d found someone he felt safe with for the first time. Now this could go either way - this person could be angry and resentful because they blame him for what happened to their sister, or they could be like 'she wouldn’t have listened even if you told her to leave’ because they know how stubborn she was and how much she cared about him, so there was nothing to be done and it was just a tragic story. Anyway this is my shit, there’s angst either way and I’m ready for it.

The Friend from Before - Someone he met and ran with for a certain period of time after he escaped Houston and before he came back and joined the Lycans. I think it opens up a lot of doors - like this person could now be back in town, or they’ve been here for a while, maybe they’re a Reaper (ooh drama), or unaffiliated, or want to join the Lycans, idk the possibilities are endless! I’m just excited about someone who knew him from before, I think that would make for an interesting dynamic to expore esp if there’s angst and someone left someone behind…

The Ex - Okay just like the one before, I’m leaving this pretty open to interpretation. It can be as casual or as angsty as we wish, we’ll just figure it out. I mean that journalist girl he fell in love with was his more serious thing, but he’s not that young I’m sure there’s been a lot of people along the way. It could be his crippling issues that got in the way, or both of them had crippling issues (entirely plausible tbh), they might have been too explosive for each other, or he wanted to protect them… It could be someone like the Friend from Before, so like during that time period (which would be super interesting actually!), or someone from Lycan he’s on bad terms with, or good terms? Honestly, sky’s the limit I just love exploring different dynamics and also heartbreak and also why people don’t end up working together.

The Mentor/Mentees - Ok the old Alpha was his mentor, but tbh I would like to see someone played who took him under his wing back then, like showing him the ropes, teaching him things, practicing with him, building him as a person etc. I just dig that okay? I dig it the other way around too though, so if anyone is willing to be his mentee and go through that stuff, I'm so there for it. Because he sees himself in a lot of the troubled people so he’s always there for it, even through it’s sometimes tough love. We can always work out the dynamics so that it fits both characters, but I would just love to see it happen. I think it brings out the protective/caring side in Nik.

More, more, more!! - I might add things on as I go, but honestly if you have an idea for a connection (does’t have to be one of the above) please feel free to reach out! We’ll work it out and tbh nothing’s set in stone.

THE STORY

He was born in Downtown, Houston - dirt poor trailer park kid who was still too young to be bitter and resentful about the cards he’d been dealt. His father was a petty criminal, hell-bent on trying to impress the Reapers, just as he was hell bent on spending what little money they had on gambling, or beating them and their mother. All in all - his childhood was a bleak series of weeks and months and years, spent alongside his older brother and a younger sister. 

Their father tried to groom Ethan and Nik for the life of crime, wanting to introduce them to the Reapers from a young age. But as soon as those two were capable of thinking for themselves, they realised most of it was just senseless violence and a promise of a life of subservience. They played along to an extent (training-wise) but generally rebelled against him even if they’d earn a beating after that. 

Eventually their mother disappeared, taking their sister along with her. As it would turn out, with Lycans on the rise she saw an opportunity and ran. Nik guesses she thought her ex-husband had already asserted too much influence over Ethan and Nik so they were left behind. There were stories that the Alpha took an interest in her, which sent their father pretty much further over the edge so next few years would be hell for the brothers. 

Nik and Ethan were each other’s stone during those formative years, but eventually their mother reached out to Ethan offering him a way out, leaving Nik behind once again. It was first of many brutal hits to come that Nik would have to learn to deal with.

Enraged by the fact she took his firstborn, Nik’s father tracked down their sister, and as retaliation, took her away from her mother and the Lycans. Nik saw her only briefly, exchanging barely a few words before she was sold off to god knows where. Seeing what his father was truly capable of doing, Nik escaped Houston, his mind set on finding and saving his sister. 

He’d spend the next few years bouncing around, erasing his traces along the way as he perfected his skills and looked for his sister - using his rage and determination as a driving force. 

Things would come to a halt though, when the news of his brother’s death reached him somehow. Apparently, their father had no problem driving a knife through his son’s heart the first chance he got. Broken and in disbelief, Nik flew back to Houston. 

He laid low for a while, before finally feeling prepared enough to strike down his father. That didn’t go down as well as he’d hoped, considering his Reaper friends got involved - but Nik was content enough with the damage he’d done. This was his first try after all. 

This was a catalyst for the Lycans’ Alpha to reach out to Nik - it seemed that out of the bunch, he was the only one left, and he was borderline insane with rage and hatred he harboured against his father and the Reapers. Which was exactly the kind of thing that was of interest for Alpha. 

He’d spend his late teenage years and early adulthood with the Lycans, being trained as one of their own, rising through the ranks, being subtly groomed by the alpha. He’d meet a girl in those years, a stubborn reporter he would fall madly in love with, and he’d probably tell you those were his ‘happy’ years. 

But his father wasn’t done yet - he eventually had Nik’s girlfriend beaten to a pulp, left do die in a dark, damp alley so that all Nik could do in the end, was say goodbye to her by the hospital bed and then go out to seek his revenge. 

It seriously messed him up, but he also seemed completely unable to rest until he tracked his father down and set fire to the house he was staying in. A cruel way to go, considering he knew of his father’s fear of fire - but Nik was long past caring. 

The rest was history. The Alpha continued to groom him to eventually become his successor but their time would be cut short by an illness that started tormenting the old man. A vote was cast, and though Nik got the majority - he didn’t get all the votes like the Alpha had hoped. Main concern among the deciding betas was Nik’s age - they were of the opinion that he was too young to take on such a responsibility. 

Though slightly reluctant, after the old Alpha abdicated about a year ago - Nik rose to the occasion and took his place as the new Alpha, and has been working out just what kind of leader he’s meant to be for the past year. 

[keremulusoy]

With her soft voice and a contemporary interpretation, Asena Akan is considered one of the important representators of jazz music. Since her early childhood, Asena Akan has always been a music enthusiast as she started her musical education at the age of 5 in violin section of Istanbul Municipal Conservatoire. She was also trained part-time in Opera Section of State Conservatoire of Istanbul University.  Apart from her passion for music, Akan was also interested in human behaviour so she did her undergraduate and graduate studies in this area in Psychological Counselling Department at Istanbul University. Asena Akan who has been integrating the healing/transforming power of music with her life  has been continuing her musical journey with the music band “İstanbul’dan (from Istanbul)” by doing jazz vocals, composing music and executing stage performances after releasing two albums named “İstanbul’un İzleri” (Traces of Istanbul) and “Golden Heart”

Can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers? Who is Asena Akan? I have been describing myself as a person who is trying to make a sound since I was five. And I still miss who I was at that age and I feel the need of those natural sounds in my music workshops. My passion for music started when I started to repeat all the sounds at the age of five and my family was confused to whether to send me to a doctor or to a conservatory. I got training at the Violin Department of Istanbul Municipality Conservatory. The instructors there deemed the violin was fit for me but I could not get used to the violin no matter what I did. For five years, I have tried to get into the violin but it never happened. At heart, I liked the piano. I left the conservatory after having difficulties but I have not given up on music. Since I was a child, I have been on the watch for the bass and the drums when listening to music. I even love instrumental music. I bought a bass guitar fifteen years ago. Five years ago, I accelerated my communication with my instrument by saying, ‘I will play it now”. In short, I’m an Istanbul lover who was born and raised in Istanbul and who cannot part with music. Music, Istanbul and I complete each other.

BEING A SOUND

You decided to focus on your passion for music rather than your academic career. Yet, you organized a workshop named “Being a sound” which combines both of your experiences. Yes, all my works support each other. Because going to the different corners of Istanbul or visiting different places in Turkey are things that foster each other. Touching people, learning from their lives, exchanging ideas and emotions are very inspiring. Doing this through music is very nice, on the other hand, like I mentioned before, I organize workshops making use of what I have learned during my studies in psychological counselling. In the past, I organized some seminars and did one-on-one psychological counselling. I said to myself “Why am I not doing all these through music?” and now I organize music workshops, which are called “Being a Sound” where we focus on expressing ourselves, transforming emotions and on concepts such as creativity and inspiration with different groups. The development of the philosophy of “Being a Sound” is a whole another story. I think everyone is born into the world as a different instrument, and how you use these potentials makes you unique. That is why I put great importance on communication. The same thing goes for performing at a concert or a workshop. I have noticed this in every aspect of life. Are you angry? How does your mood reflect on your spouse, child, significant other, friends or other people? Making these contacts between the music and those processes in life strengthens the works. Since every individual is a different instrument, there are different workshops, no workshop is alike.

So, what kind of impact did Istanbul which you can’t stop talking about have in your music life? All my works are influenced by Istanbul. There are parts of the city I can identify myself with. I believe everyone is born with a golden heart. There may be some corruptions afterwards due to the experiences which I call “being out of tune”. We resist, change, learn and go on in one way or the other. We witness that Istanbul is also beaten and broken. Then suddenly you see Galata Tower from a corner, you hear the sound of the sea. This gives me joy in life. So actually, there is such a thing as “my Istanbul” because I am no stranger to the other side of Istanbul. I am a person who also has a history of being a psychological counsellor apart from being a musician. I majored in psychological counselling at the university and being an academician was my first profession. That is why my social works side is strong. So, Istanbul is not just limited to where I live. I visit many other places. With music and workshops I do, I can reach other places and people not only in Istanbul but throughout Turkey.

What can be done for the children to love and know Istanbul that we can barely protect? Have you thought about it? Children are very instructive. For those who want to learn, anything can be some kind of an Instruction tool. I have a daughter too, her name is Sofya. I have learned so much from Sofya. We have discovered many things together. We walked together to the places I enjoy in Istanbul and went exploring together. First, she adapted to me, my life, my walking. Then, she started picking the places we would go and I followed. At some point, we even thought: “Why are we not going to a mall?” because I wanted to introduce my daughter to the real Istanbul. Even if I had been born in a different city, I could have fallen in love with that city. The city phenomenon is a very different concept. There is an energy in which people come together and do things or miss each other in a cosmopolitan city like Istanbul. I am very much in love with Istanbul but it is not that hard for me to adapt myself to wherever I go. It is about exploration and the sense of wonder. We must teach our children the pleasure of discovering hidden values and preserving them, but of course, they should want it too.

“JAZZ IS A DEMOCRATIC MUSIC”

Back to your music career, what would you like to say about jazz? What impresses me the most about jazz is that it is a democratic music. It involves different sounds and colours. That every instrument expresses itself through role changes such as being a leader or being an accompanist accordingly. These impress me. I find it very similar to my philosophy in life. Since my childhood, I have been very sensitive about discrimination. Jazz is helping me find my way during this soul searching. There are lives I try to touch and I have shown this to them as a role model. Jazz is an incredible instructor for me. Singing is inspiring and keeps one young and dynamic. Being involved with music, in general, makes me experience those feelings. With music, we are at places both of learning and teaching. I am very happy that music is accompanying my life and I think it should accompany everyone in their lives in some way. My album Istanbul’un İzleri (Traces of Istanbul) is the apple of my eye. It was born after three years of work. Very valuable musicians contributed to this album. Golden Heart came together after English compositions were made. Afterwards, an EP called “Parçalar” where I interpreted some of the songs in this album in Turkish and a single called “Suya Yazdım” which I composed with mixed emotions were published. Nowadays we have a band called “Istanbul’dan” to which I enjoy belonging.

Asena Akan

Asena Akan

Asena Akan

Asena Akan

İstanbul’dan müzik grubu

Grupta piyanoyu Ayca Daştan, davul ve perküsif enstrümanlarını Nihal Saruhanlı çalıyor. Vokalde ve basta ise Asena Akan hünerlerini sergiliyor.

How was the band “İstanbul’dan” born? The mastermind behind the “İstanbul’dan” in which we interpreted the folk songs of Anatolian culture in our language to understand and touch the lands we live on  is Ayca Daştan. We had a musical collaboration with Ayca for many years. When she explained this beautiful project three or four years ago to me, I got involved. Folk song arrangements in the project are done by her. In the band, Ayca Daştan plays the piano and the lovely Nihal Saruhanlı who joined the band later plays the drums and the percussions. I do the vocals and play the bass. As in all other fields, it is necessary to spend a lot of time and effort to produce something good in music. We have worked on “Istanbul’dan” very seriously and in a very disciplined way. At first, we did not plan it to be a “women’s project” but it happened that way.

 It’s a project where I enjoy being a musician. The sincerity of “Istanbul’dan” is what impresses me the most. We did not start off with the aim “We grew up here, we learned about Western music, let’s create something by mixing these two up.” It would not have affected me so much if we had. An organic process developed where emotions were heavily involved. At first, the stories of the folk songs affected us, then they got integrated with our own stories. We re-internalize folk songs with Ayça’s arrangements then we re-interpret them on the stage improvising, depending on our mood. That is what deems this project original for me. The album has been released recently. It is also on digital platforms. Our purpose is to bring music, its stories and the people of this period together and to present it with our energy and emotions. I have never felt the need to constantly “shine through” in music. Rather, I need to be a part of the democratic music where instruments rise and fall in harmony, where sometimes some instruments express themselves by becoming more prominent, where everyone’s voice and tone colour are respected and where everyone creates a dialog. There is a brave, curious and noteworthy audience in our country who wants to hear new things and is open to different voices. My first album “İstanbul’un İzleri” brought me together with these beautiful hearts although I didn’t do any promotional work.

We talked about the healing power of music, but music has also a uniting power. What would you like to say about the effect of music in this sense considering that people in the world are separated and cannot express their feelings clearly and uncensored? The concept of “IKIGAI”, which is the subject of a book I have read recently and is calledthe secret of Japanese long and happy life, questions “What is the purpose of your life that makes you get out of bed in the morning?” What motivates me to wake up is to make as many and different people, including me, benefit from the uniting and healing power of music. That is why I organize the workshops named “Being a Voice” I am also a part of the “We Care Association”, which develops products and services for children to achieve their fundamental rights. We developed a “Mother-Child Development Guidance Program” for mothers with children in penal institutions. Besides, we organize trainer training for employees. And we all benefit from the healing power of music together. It is important for somebody or some people that you make him/them understood and that you connect with him/them. Even the smallest things you do mean something for them and benefit them. But of all methods, I think music is the fastest, most direct and most effective. In fact, it provides a positive environment that also removes people with its non-judgmental and embracing nature. Music is a tool that has been used as a therapy method for the treatment of diseases for centuries with scientific and evidence-based principles. This is not something newly discovered, we just have to open ourselves up to it. As Sufi Inayat Khan expressed in a statement I like; “Music is the most effective means and the shortest way to integrate man with himself, then with other people, and then with the universe.”

NOTES

About Asena Akan Born in Istanbul, Asena Akan started her musical education at the age of five with classical violin at Istanbul Municipal Conservatory, then received part time training in the Opera Department at the Istanbul State Conservatory and graduated in 1998. Akan also plays bass guitar and continues her musical journey by doing jazz vocals, making musical compositions and stage performances.

Sunset Concerts The concert took place at sunset in the Istanbul Bookstore at Kadıköy Pier. I sang songs from my album İstanbu’un İzleri. It was a very enjoyable performance with the interactive participation of the audience. I was more than happy to have a public concert.

Albums: ‘İstanbul’un İzleri’ (2013) written and composed by her, released by Z/Kalan; ‘Golden Heart’(2016); ‘Parçalar’ (EP-2017); ‘Suya Yazdım’ (Single-2019)

Songs Performed By Them: Kerpiç Kerpiç Üstüne, Yağmur Yağar Taş Üstüne, Gelevera Deresi, Yemen Türküsü

İstanbul’dan Asena Akan: Vocal&bass Ayca Daştan: Piano Nihal Saruhanlı: Drum&percussions

It consists of three female musicians from Istanbul who interpret folk songs of Anatolian culture in their language to understand and touch the lands they live on. Improvisations, another important element that the band is nurtured of, create the artists’own stories. The concert, which is shaped by improvisations that transfer the loop between past, present, and future and is changing every time, turns into a new experience for those who love and know folk songs as well as first-time listeners.

The Progressive and Innovative Nature Of Jazz I do not believe in the viewpoint that jazz belongsto a certain culture and must be performed within a certain framework. On the contrary, I think that its nature operates in the cycle and balance of breaking the existing rules, building new ones, and then breaking them. More generally, I associate the progressive and innovative nature of jazz with the values of being a self-improving person. That is why I am confident that in Anatolia, which has been home to so many innovative and valuable musicians, there is an audience who will listen to new kinds of music and open their hearts to it.

By: Hatice Çetinlerden & Dilara Gülşah Azaplar Photos: Yağızkan Karahan *This article was  published in the  November-December issue of Marmara Life. 

SOUND OF ISTANBUL With her soft voice and a contemporary interpretation, Asena Akan is considered one of the important representators of jazz music.

[kingofthewilderwest]

Just wanted your opinion on something. Roy's Gate of Truth has the circle for fire alchemy on it. So does this mean that Roy was always meant to have learnt fire alchemy, or his gate has fire alchemy because he learnt it?

Oooooooooooo this is REALLY interesting. I’d never thought through a person’s Gate of Truth and whether it’s about who they innately are (or are fated to be), versus who they have created themselves to be. 

I haven’t followed to see if there’s fandom discussion on the topic, so everything I’m going to postulate below about these doors is going to be my novel ideas. 

Hopefully everything makes sense… I wrote this between 1 and 4 AM.

I think the key to answering this question lies in Father’s Gate of Truth. I’ll get to that… later. Bear with me.

But first.

For readers who didn’t notice this before, every character has a different door design when they open the Portal of Truth. That’s a fascinating detail and one Arakawa wouldn’t have drawn without attention or intent. She’s filled FMA with tiny details, down to naming the country “Amestris” after the wife of Xerxes, or giving essentially all military characters names based off WWII vehicles. She’s plopped in interesting details regarding the Seven Deadly Sins, according to other analyses I’ve seen. From what I know, the punishment for Wrath is supposed to be dismemberment, Lust being smothered in fire… sound familiar? So Arakawa wouldn’t have drawn separate, intricate gates for every character without meaning to for good reason.

So here are three doors for our alchemists, each one of them different:

All of them are detailed but very different. Ed’s and Al’s are more similar to each other than Roy’s is to either of them. Both Ed and Al have designs that roughly look like trees (or plants) stretching to the sky, with roots growing beneath them. 

Edward Elric’s Gate

Ed’s door is covered in Latin and Hebrew words like “Elohim Sabaoth” and “Adonai” - names of G-d, linked together by branches labeled “Sephiroth”…

…as well as, from what admittedly VERY little I know of the Kabbalah, the angels of the Tree of Life. 

(Please don’t quote me as an expert for this stuff. I’m trying my best with this information I’m reading up on, but I’ll freely admit I’m imperfect and with limited knowledge myself. You’re free to nicely educated me if I say something inaccurate; I will be appreciative of learning more and adjusting appropriately).

It’s to note that even in the 2003 book “Fullmetal Alchemist Profiles,” it contains a section on the Kabbalah. To quote the book: 

Some time in the 16th century, the Kabbalah became known throughout the whole of Europe. It seems unlikely that it has any prior connection to alchemy, which developed on its own individual course, but there is one thing that the Kabbalah shares with alchemy: both teach that the world came out of G-d (=one) who created it, and that the human beings (=all) who inhabit the physical world can become closer to G-d through study.

The Sephiroth tree diagram shows the Kabbalah’s Arcana. The Sephiroth tree is comprised of ten spheres (Sephira), three pillars, and 22 paths (channels). Each number has a very specific meaning but we will abbreviate it here.

The tree is essentially a map that shows how the things that came from G-d’s world - a nebulous, untouchable domain - become connected to the physical world of the four basic elements.

What’s interesting is that this book specifically brings up the Kaballah and connects it with the “One is all, all is one” phrase. That’s a phrase central to Amestrian alchemy… at least, to a certain few people who practice Amestrian alchemy. The concept of “One is all, all is one” is a powerful epiphany to Izumi Curtis when she’s struggling through her month of trial in the Briggs mountain wilderness. She passes it onto her students, Ed and Al, and it becomes important to them.

(It’s also a concept that Truth describes itself with… saying it is “perhaps truth, or perhaps all, or perhaps one”).

And this concept, more or less, makes its appearance onto Edward Elric’s door.

But why all the names of G-d?

And why this tree with its roots at all?

Does this have something to do with how Ed is like an Icarus, reaching beyond his power to get too close to the sun, a scientist acting too much like God himself? Is this Gate a reflection of that life-influential action in Edward’s life, or a fate set in stone carved in the face of the door? 

Or something else?

Well. I want to contrast this with Father’s door.

Father’s Gate

It’s.

Blank.

Wow.

I think that this door, paired with Father’s conversation with Truth, might give some insight for what’s going on.

Father: Why won’t you become mine, God?Truth: Because you never believed in yourself. You thought you could make God’s power your own. Don’t make me laugh. You think stealing something powerful makes you great? You’re nothing but a cunning thief. You should have stayed satisfied inside the flask where you belong. All you’ve ever done is use the strength of others to grab at godhood. You haven’t grown at all. Father: I wanted to become a perfect being! I wanted to understand God! I wanted to know everything about this world! So, why do you oppose me? Who are you?!Truth: I am what humans call the world… or the universe… or truth… or all… or one. And… I am you. You called Truth “the arbiter of order” that “keeps men in their place.” That’s what you said, wasn’t it? And so, just as you said… I’m going to show you your proper place.Father: Stop! I don’t want to go back. No… I don’t want to be imprisoned there again! Truth: The Truth brings despair to those who dare reach above their station. This is the end you wished for.

What strikes me about this conversation is several things.

Truth has power over the homunculus, the dwarf in the flask, the character we’ve known as Father. Despite the fact Father is a man-made creature and not “directly” from God’s fingertips or God’s typical order of life business (birth, the circle of life, what have you), Truth has control over Father, too. Truth is the one who can arbitrate Father’s punishment. Truth is the one who can put Father in his place. This means that, if we wanted to talk about whether or not Father was Meant or Fated to take his path… whether his actions were part of predestination or design… then Truth’s got just as much power over Father, and just as much power to influence Father’s door… as someone like Mustang, Izumi Curtis, or the Elrics. So Truth conceivably could have given Father his door’s decoration (or lack thereof).

Truth says that Father’s problem is he is a thief who took others’ strengths. Father never gave anything or contributed anything. Furthermore, according to Truth, Father “[hasn’t] grown at all.”If you want to think about people in a tabula rasa-esque respect, then we all allegedly start out as clean slates, with nothing predisposing our minds. It’s through our lives and experiences that we become who we are. When I see Father’s blankass doorway and hear it combined with Truth saying Father never gave anything and never grew… the thought crossed my mind that, “Father’s nothing, then, just like his doorway.” 

Truth chastises Father for not believing in himself or growing himself. This suggests that Father has the free will to have made choices otherwise. Let’s not get deep into the rabbit hole of determinism, free will, and compatibilism… but if Truth is punishing Father for his own actions, and Truth is admonishing Father for never believing himself (with the implication he COULD have believed in himself), then I’d say we have a direction we can interpret the doorways. It’s not Truth creating a blank doorway for Father to fulfill, but Father’s actions influencing what his doorway looks like. 

At least, this is insofar as we want to speculate the Gates of Truth are relevantly connected to the life of the person who opens them. I’m saying this since we could maybe find other ways to interpret this imagery that don’t involve “my choice made this doorway’s design.”

But let’s go with the idea that Father’s actions have “made” his door blank. Then Ed’s door, and Al’s door, and Roy’s door, would come because of what they’ve done.

Considering as Ed made the choice to march beyond God and reach for the sun, and Ed lives in an alchemy-centered philosophy where “One is all, all is one,” his door isn’t too out of line for what we might expect to see, given his life’s biggest decisions and focuses.

Roy Mustang’s Gate

So here we’ve got a screencap of Roy’s gate. Well, part of it. You can see the interlocked triangle pattern and what could be two basilisks weaving through the geometry. There’s a sun-like icon in the bottom center. We also have a circle in the very center of the two triangles.

It’s not exactly the same as the transmutation circle Roy wears on his gloves, nor is it the same as what Berthold Hawkeye tattooed on his daughter’s back.

However, I’d say it’s evocative enough. There’s a sun, the same-ish geometric pattern, and the same use of basilisks or snakes in each pattern. 

So, a reference to Flame Alchemy, as you say.

But it’s not just the act of “oh snap snap spark spark” being represented here.

The inclusion of our snakey snakey friends in the door - which is present in Riza’s tat but not Roy’s glove - harks back to Roy’s origins with Flame Alchemy. How he learned it. How he grew with it. How it changed his life. How these experiences fueled his own motivations and intentional self-aggrandizement.

How he made himself (in contrast to Father, who never grew at all). 

How he made… his Gate of Truth. 

This is how (going back to the Kabbalah idea) he connects the things from his world and life with God’s/Truth’s realm and judgment.

Roy’s life does circle around Flame Alchemy, but it’s because of his most influential memories and the greatest decisions he’s made. It’s because of Flame Alchemy that he met Riza and learned how to use this force. It’s because Mustang decided to take this dangerous alchemy to the military that he became a State Alchemist. It’s because he became a State Alchemist that, when he obeyed Amestrian military orders, he became a major (haha, get the pun) player in the Ishvalan War. It’s because he participated in ethnic genocide and became so conscious-stricken about it that he decided to become Führer. And ever since then, Roy’s life and decisions and motivations and morality and choices and determination have all centered around this goal: become Führer, change his country for the better.

Father didn’t make himself anything. Father only tried to steal from others. Father tried to purge himself of the Seven Deadly Sins and leave himself with nothing - literally make himself an empty door with emptiness. Father’s door is as empty as what he made himself. Roy Mustang’s been trying to grow himself into a responsible leader who can scale up the ranks of the military and assume control of his nation. Roy’s door is a summation of his motivations: the causes which have made him this way, and what he’s using as an inspirational launching point to make himself better.

So I’d say there’s a case to be made that, as you said, Mustang’s “gate has fire alchemy because he learnt it.” But more than that, it’s what he’s used to craft himself as a moral person.

We have the choice to try to better ourselves. Roy’s decisions and actions to try to better himself have stemmed from his experiences surrounding Flame Alchemy.

The Message of Choice in Fullmetal Alchemist

This idea fits with the messages emanating across Fullmetal Alchemist. FMA isn’t about fate. It’s about the power of your choice. 

I mean… even in the first titular opening, YUI is singing:

I still have too long a life ahead just to give up and drop off all these dreams. I just want to try and fix all the things that I’ve left undone. I thought that I could reach something carried over I saw within my dreams, and yet I stumble on all my actions on this road that’s in front of me. It’s not like I want things to go back to the way before. All I want is to open my eyes and feel the sun. 

You can’t let every single sin end with tears; wear them proudly on your sleeve along with your fears. It’s like you’re waiting for someone to draw near. In a maze of emotion, there comes a day where you find a way to escape - a blank page, now I’m writing out my own fate; I’ve grown tired of running away from a thing called reality.

FMA’s story and its themes are very much hinged on choice. 

Scar doesn’t have to be a serial killer terrifying State Alchemists. He can choose to help his people not through terrorism and revenge, but through rebuilding and support. He can unite his people together to save Amestris. He can act as a religious authority in Ishval once the land gets reopened, helping to preserve the cultural and religious identity of his people. Through Scar’s choices, he moves through a powerful redemption arc that shows that, while we can’t always control other peoples’ horrendous acts, we don’t have to commit horrendous acts in turn to make a meaningful difference. The character arc works because of his choices. He will listen to his God and see what his God’s will is. God’s authority and power isn’t irrelevant. But Scar is the one who must enact that choice himself. He is not fated to one path and his people don’t have to be fated to die.

It’s about his choice.

Ed and Al didn’t have to bring Trisha back to life, but because they tried, they reaped the consequences. Truth took away their bodies. It’s their choices that put them in this unpleasant state, and it’s their choices and determination that lead them to recovering Ed’s arm and Al’s body.

It’s about their choice.

Roy and Riza live a life of guilt due to Ishval. There’s no way that they can undo the damage they’ve done. There will forever be consequences because of their sins. But they can choose to do whatever is in their power to take responsibility for their wrongs, to provide relief for victims of the past, and to try to prevent future tragedies.

It’s about their choice, too.

And thus it makes sense for us to read the Gates as “everyone made their gates the way they are” rather than “the gates made them the way they are.” It’s because FMA resonates with the understanding of our choices, good or bad, and what comes of them.

Roy Mustang’s gate by this reading then says that it’s through his choices that his gate has Flame Alchemy. It’s about his choice to follow orders in Ishval that led to his guilt. It’s about his choice to become Führer to take better responsibility for Ishval’s tragedy. It’s about how Roy uses Flame Alchemy, yeah. Because Flame Alchemy is connected to his greatest experiences, tragedies, dreams, and self-directed growth.

[thebellwitchblog]

Some Things I Feel the Need to Address in Fandom

Hello there! I’ve been in fandom for a long time and as such have witnessed it evolve into what it is today. I wasn’t around during the times when people feared Anne Rice and her lawyers, but I did pop into the scene soon after when the horror was still fresh in everyone’s minds, and I’ve been around in some capacity ever since. Fandom has always always had problems that needed addressing, and that’s what I intend to do in this post. Yes, there are plenty of posts just like this one floating around Tumblr and other sites where fandom gathers, even in the author’s notes of fanfiction where disclaimers once stood.

All fandoms across the board have the same problems, some more so than others, but the same general themes show up. Of course depending on the canon material there are more problems of certain types than others, but really most problems stem from one thing: People are trying to police how others experience fandom.

What do I mean by this? Well, simply put, select people are trying to decide what is and isn’t acceptable for other people to do in fandom. This goes beyond educating about polite ways to interact with each other and straight into deciding what is or isn’t okay to headcanon or ship.

The major problem with this is that fandom arose from people that were passionate about some creative work or another and wanted to share this passion with others, even if they didn’t agree on certain aspects what bound them together was their shared love for the source material. There have always been ship wars and discourse in the communities, but here within the last few years, particularly here on Tumblr, these have gotten out of hand.

It is perfectly fine to disagree about who should be paired together, to disagree over headcanons and how characters should be remade. It’s okay to disagree, but once disagreements become demonization and a toxic us vs them ideology then fandom becomes a dangerous place. I’ve witnessed all out vicious wars on here over things like shipping a 17 year old with someone in their mid-20s. This isn’t okay.

Fanon is literally anything you want it to be. That’s why it isn’t canon. Fanon is taking the canon and changing it up as much as you would like until it’s perfectly suited for you. Do you ship these two characters? Great now they’re together in your fanon. Do you think this character gives off major ace vibes? Well guess what! They’re ace! In your fanon. Your fanon does not under any circumstances get to invalidate someone else’s. Let me repeat that one more time, but bolded. Your fanon does not, under any circumstances, get to invalidate someone else’s.

So far I’ve talked in really general terms, but now I’m going to address some more specific things I’ve seen. Again, these aren’t about any specific fandom, but specific problems I’ve seen people fighting over in multiple fandoms.

Shipping minors with adults. This is, not gonna lie, a very very iffy area and it comes up a lot. Whether or not this is okay is dependent on the age gap. NOT the age gap in the canon work, but rather the age gap in your fanon. What do I mean by this? Well, let’s say a character in canon is 21 and you’re wanting to draw them with another character that’s maybe 15 in canon. How could this be made remotely okay? Easy! Age up the younger or de-age the older enough that they’re within an acceptable age gap. This sort of stuff has existed in fandom since the dawn of fandom. It’s really nothing new. Note: This is not pedophilia! Pedophilia, by definition, is a chronophilia (sexual attraction to individuals within a specific stage of life), and mental illness, characterized by the sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children, which the DSM-5 includes up to age 13, by adults. Even without changing the ages, a 15 year old being shipped with a 21 year old is not pedophilia. It is Hebephilia or, more likely, Ephebophilia depending on whether the 15 year old is experiencing puberty or just after it and what definition of the two you reference as these have not been formally included as a mental illness as of yet and thus do not have an agreed upon age range, but regardless 14 and 15 year olds do not fall in the range of pedophilia.

Shipping canonically non-het characters in het relationships. This is what we’ve been doing all along with cishet characters this entire time, guys. Literally probably 90% of slash/femslash (oh geez are these terms even used anymore? I think I’m showing my age) is two canonically heterosexual characters being shipped in a pretty gay relationship. Granted this usually happens because there wasn’t a lot of representation, but now that representation is growing it’s to be expected that people are going to do the same with the LGBT characters. This goes right back to what I touched on earlier in this post- let everyone experience fandom like they want. Note: It is not homophobic to ship a non-het character with someone of the opposite gender just like it’s not heterophobic to ship two het characters in a gay relationship. This especially goes for characters that we don’t know their sexuality specifically we just know that they’re non-het.

Feeling like the creators of the source work owe you something. This one isn’t something you see outright stated a lot, but it’s evident in how people act towards animation studios, authors, etc. Whenever something doesn’t go how people want it to in the canon, then people practically riot and threaten the creators- even the voice actors and actors will get hate from fans when they don’t have any, or very minimal, control over where the story goes. Yes, you can get upset over what happens in the canon and get worked up, but when it gets to threats and absolute chaos? Especially when it’s just a rumor? That’s not okay anymore. That’s when it gets toxic. We have headcanons and fanon for a reason. It’s there so that if the canon material goes completely opposite of what you’d like you can still have that perfect ending. That’s a large part of why we have fanworks. 

Other Problematic Ships. Policing ships isn’t always due to age gaps. I’ve witnessed it with canonically abusive characters a lot, for instance. Regardless of why a ship is “problematic” there is no excuse for telling someone they cannot ship it. Not only does this fall back to the whole “Let everyone experience fandom how they want” ideology I’ve brought up on multiple occasions throughout this post, but also they can interpret this ship however they want. People disregard canon a lot in fandom, so why is this any different? More often than not the character isn’t abusive in their fanon no matter what the canon might say. Even if the character is still abusive in the ship, that doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to ship it. I’ve talked to some people where these ships were an honest to god coping mechanism for them after they got out of an abusive relationship. Note: This does not make it okay to romanticize abuse.

These next few points aren’t specific to fandom but instead Tumblr as a whole that are a huge problem in fandom as well.

Echochambers. Tumblr, and social media in general, is notorious for this. People surround themselves with like-minded people and block anyone that even slightly differs from their opinions. Why is this a bad thing? Because when we’re surrounded by the same viewpoints our viewpoint narrows. A lot. And misinformation spreads faster and is harder to get rid of. Not to mention other problems such as nurturing an us vs them ideology. Things get blown out of proportion, people become unable to cope with opposition, and it’s just not a good time for anyone involved.

Callout Culture. Callout posts are so so so common that it is honestly overwhelming. If you’ve been on this site and actively posting for any length of time, you’ve probably been called out by someone for some perceived crime against humanity. Whether or not you actually committed this crime, or if this “crime” is actually worth the backlash, you’re now blacklisted by a varying number of people depending on how many followers the person has. Congratulations! Crimes can be, but are certainly not limited to: - reblogging a post from someone you didn’t know was some vile creature in human clothing (whether they actually are one or not doesn’t matter. What matters is they’re considered one). - you used a term you had no earthly idea was a slur. No slap on the wrist for you, you’re going straight to the gallows. - posting fanart of a ship someone considers problematic (see two prime examples above!) Why is Callout Culture such a problem? It demonizes and turns entire communities against someone for minor mistakes or entirely bogus reasons in the first place. If someone makes a mistake they shouldn’t be blacklisted immediately; they should be informed of why what they did was wrong first and foremost and given the chance to change.

Holding Grudges. Please. I am begging you. Let. People. Grow. If someone says something years ago and then not only apologizes but proves they’ve changed? Let it go and move on. What is the point in insisting that people need to widen their views if you won’t let them live down a mistake they made beforehand? If they change then reward their efforts instead of holding their mistakes over their head. This goes for actors and actresses, directors, producers, people here on Tumblr, etc.

I could keep going and bring up even more problems, but honestly I’m tired. It’s time to wrap this up.  tl;dr stop acting like you own fandom and let people do what they want. Let people ship what they want, headcannon what they want, etc etc etc. Fandom belongs to everyone and canon material belongs to the actual creator, not you. The only thing you own is the stuff that you make. Mind your own business, stay in your lane, and let things go every now and then. You’ll be a lot happier, I promise.

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (Backtrack through 251-264)

(I am better understanding the appeal of reading Homestuck liveblogs because now I really wanna go read how other people dealt with this lil reveal.)

So...one thing that didn't occur to me in my many previous Thoughts was that the Vagabond might not be here accidentally — I may have been unduly influenced by knowing them by the name "Wayward Vagabond." They might have been searching for the SBURB bunker precisely so they could interact with the kids/the past; they might even have arrived or been summoned here on this specific day so they can do so. Or they might be the Skaia-survivor I hypothesized, who was out of the bunker running errands, and we joined them as they were coming 'home'. Though the impression that the Vagabond was curious and wary and exploratory and Not At Home was pretty strong, so I dunno. (Also, I would think if they were in on the plot, they'd understand more about John/the game/the lingo.)

But the Vagabond DOES recognize that they can communicate with the boy on the screen, DOES know how to operate the console (simple as it appears to be), DOES know how to read and write and type (although not to turn off the Caps Lock). Which perhaps adds weight to the notion that they were alive/educated in the Before Times?

Also, this console is clearly designed to let someone communicate with those on screen — but Skaianet also clearly had the technology to allow even more extensive interaction, à la John's magic chest on the roof of his house. So why is the connection only via the command line, why not a full suite of SBURB-style fixit tools? It could be an inherent limitation related to: a) the time disjunct, if "years in the future" is true; or b) a place disjunct cos we have no idea where either John or the Vagabond are; or c) an internet disjunct cos we have no friggin clue how their computers are communicating with each other at all (especially since John's house shouldn't even have power). Obvi, the command-line could simply be the default function, and the console is capable of other things that we and the Vagabond don't know about yet, but we shall see.

Because the arrival of the "BOY" Voice coincided with the division of the Kernelsprite and creation of the the Harmesperm, I made an assumption that the Voice was the Sperm's voice (and I imagine I ain't the first). I do speculate that the coinciding wasn't completely coincidental, though.

The first image the Vagabond sees is just after John took the bite of the apple and got his house ozzed to wherever he is now. So I wonder if that's where this mysterious connection between their computers starts — maybe the Vagabond couldn't have watched any of the pre-Meteor stuff in John's house, or interacted with him before then? 

As to HOW the connection started, or whether the ability for them to interact has anything to do with the KERNEL or the SPRITE? On that I have no guesses yet.

One curious thing is why the Vagabond's commands are reaching John as a "voice in his head." John is reporting this to Rose as new and troubling, so he didn't experience the previous reader commands in the same way, even if his "free will" occasionally argued with those commands. I've been told Hussie doesn't use dialogue in his comics, that all information is conveyed through Pesterlogs, command lines, narration, etc. So why did he choose to have the Vagabond's words manifest differently than the other reader commands, and differently from any other form of communication we’ve seen?  I think the most important part is probably John saying “i feel compelled to do these weird things i don't really want to do,” that commands coming from that particular console/place are ones he can’t disobey? 

If those commands had been communicated in a different way (like appearing on John’s devices) it wouldn’t have allowed for confusing the Vagabond's Voice with the SPRITE's, I suppose, and would invite more questioning from John as to who was 'on the other end' of the computer, but still interesting distinctions. 

So — going to re-read from that first "BOY" on page 251, and capture any deeper/revised thoughts along the way.  

Firstly, "the two halves go their separate ways, leaving behind the SPRITE portion" — I see that I misread that the KERNEL was the dual clown-silhouette things and the SPRITE was the mandala-thing left hovering in midair. But I see now the KERNEL was the circular "container" for the clown, i.e, the portion that existed before it was prototyped, and the SPRITE was the now-spermy clown-bit left after the seed-potential-power parts split off to go fulfill whatever that potential is.  (dum dum DOOM!)

On to the weird interactions within the Flash…

Calling John "BOY" reinforced the impression that the Voice didn't know who he was, or much of anything else yet, which made sense if it was a newborn SPRITE. But now it means the Vagabond also doesn't know who John is — just a boy on a screen. So why are they so imperious in the way they talk to John, so sure that John needs to listen and obey?  (How much does Vagga know about why this boy is on this screen at this moment? What do they know about what happened before, or what could/should happen next, for Earth's survivors? And are they friendly or foely to our heroes? Or to Skaianet?)

And who exactly is talking back (in the Green Boxes in the Flash version, or in plain text between black+orange Command Boxes in the non-Flash), calling the Voice a "nincompoop" and "sophomoric?" It seems to be our narrator, the one who used second person to start the story with "Your name is JOHN. As was previously mentioned it is your BIRTHDAY", addressing the character of John for the most part, but also the reader/player in some ways. But to have that narrative voice talking directly to another character is quite strange. (Although much of the response to the rest of the Voice's "EXAMINE"-type commands is back to our familiar narration style.)

"TIER PROTO TYPE THE SPRITE, OR THE THING YOU SAID. DO IT." Again, Vagga seems pretty sure about this being important to do, when they don’t even know the right words to describe it, or know that John can't do it himself.

Weird inconsistencies like not having enough Earth-context to call it a "towel", but enough to call it a "small Persian rug"?  Familiar with "sewing machine" and how big it should be, but not with "totem lathe."

It's not the SPRITE that loathes clowns and harlequins, but the Vagabond.

(Housetrapped is still funny.)

"On the other hand, you would probably benefit from [NANNA's] elderly wisdom now…"

“UGH, NO.”

“So coy. So mysterious."

Twas an odd enough interchange when poking around the Flash the first time, thinking it was the SPRITE talking. But is there an implication here that Vagga knows (and dislikes) NANNA somehow, or the idea of John talking to her?

"A YOUNG STUPID BOY." On what grounds is Vagga judging John stupid?

Regarding the clowns in dad's study, the Voice says "IT HAS A KNIFE. BE ALARMED BY THIS." and "I SEE TREACHERY IN HIS EYES." — rather paranoid, aren't they? Worrisome in a newborn SPRITE, leaning towards interpreting it as inherently suspicious and violent, if not evil. Not really surprising, though, in a post-apocalyptic/post-traumatic wanderer (although it certainly doesn't rule out violent or evil).

Back to the main stream of the story, at 256:  “NOW JOHN. RESPOND TO YOUR FRIEND UNIT.”  Again, Vagga knows the word ‘friend', but not how to use it in a sentence.  (is it because they've never had a friend?? are they a poor lonely, suspicious, violent cinnamon roll…???)

My curiosity about the Voice knowing the contents of the Pesterlog remain — is Vagga actually reading Homestuck, as it were, viewing John's screen/Pesterlog "over his shoulder" the same way we are? Or does the Skaia-built interface allow for more ‘camera angles’ than we have, or other direct access to the content this screen is meant (but by whom?) to show?

The narration on 257 that says "Oh well, you're the boss." has so many implications, doesn't it? But still notes that the commands are "awkwardly worded."

The Vagabond doesn't understand the difference between what John can do and what Rose can do. 

(I just caught up to the fact that when John was fucking around with the Alchemiter, he could only create Perfectly Generic Objects because the dowel he had was Perfectly un-Lathed, with no distinguishing data points. You know how it is, it was all so new and confusing then… cause yeah, I'm WAY less confused now, right?)

But they get a platform built, and again the Narrator and the Voice tussle over commanding John and considering his feelings — the Narrator now seems protective of John, rather than objective. (That is, it has generally seemed objective before now, except in matters of taste and humor.)

The double "==>==>" commands that the Narrator was getting salty about make a lot more sense, imagining the Vagabond flailing at their keyboard.

John sensibly wants to go back inside, away from the aching and windy void, but Vagga says, "NO DON'T DO THAT. HOP OFF THIS LEDGE ON TO THAT CAR."  This is the first time they've really suggested an action they came up with themselves, rather than responding to John mentioning prototyping, or encouraging him to follow Rose's instructions. (I'm not counting all the EXAMINE THIS and DESTROY THAT that helped us explore the Flash-House — those were still essentially passive responses to John's environment.) So I’m thinking that the mail in the car is really important in some way (I mean, I didn’t think it had been placed there as a time-wasting whim — it was the only real plot point of John’s excursion outside the house), which probably means the SBURB host software John can presumably use to rescue others the way Rose-as-host rescued him. (GG’s green gift might be important too but harder to guess how.) But that brings us back to the question of how the Vagabond knows about the software and its significance if they don’t seem to understand the game itself, or even how they know the software’s location in the car.

"==>==>==>==>==>" — and I thought two was impatient!

[hee, the Vagabond's keyboard does have the CAPS LOCK key lit!]

Right-Eo… long post, but more because I had a lot more musings to capture than because there was significant re-interpretation to do over whose Voice it was. Still worth the trip in my book. My blog, I mean.

The Kernelsprite has only actually attempted to communicate twice, right? Once with strange square textury symbols, and then after Harmequin-typing, with assorted Mardi-Grahdy fleurs-de-lis? (Floor Da Lease? Flurry d'Elise? Lorida Fleas? Flour Day Lilies? Stopping now.)

Gonna bet someone in HS fandom tried some pre-empty-ve code-breaking on the comparison between the two, but Ima keep on keepin on, trust that we'll discover what the Sprite is tryin' to say sooner or later in the story.)

Left-Eo then, backtrack completed and Yawnward Ho!

[lamella320]

*Rhetoric as a Narrative*

In this entry I will be discussing the critical questions: What narrative(s) does this artifact tell about me or U.S culture or a certain group of people? What truths does it promote and what truths does it limit or ignore (who does it include and exclude)? Overall, is this narrative positive or negative for society?

The artifact I decided to analyze to further discuss the critical questions above is a YouTube video from the channel Cut. The video is called Divide Us Into Democrats & Republicans | Lineup | Cut. Here is a direct link to the video, which is also cited below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMsuvEGnvPw .This video tells the narrative of a typical American and their political views based off of stereotypes as well as personal opinions. Although this video exemplifies stereotypes Americans hold towards other Americans and their political views, it ultimately tells a positive narrative of how we can’t judge someone based off of minimal information and regardless of our political views we are just people.

Cut is a YouTube channel whose tagline and purpose is “Small questions have powerful effects when they go viral. Cut spreads stories for fun, for serious, and for real- bringing the internet together one awkward moment at a time” (2018). Their videos have various content and structure, but their most common series is one that deals with 5-6 individuals (which I will reference as categorizers), categorizing or matching people to certain ideas or things. For example, some videos are about matching the owner to their dog, or who does drag, or who is the best kisser? In the video I chose for my artifact, the creators asked four categorizers to guess if nine strangers were either Democrats or Republicans.Throughout the video each categorizer talks for a few minute to each stranger and based off of observations and small conversation, they are then categorized into Democrats or Republicans. By the end of the video, each stranger then reveals their true political stance, and gets a chance to talk about who they are and why they are apart of each party, as well as why people may have categorized them correctly or incorrectly.

There are many narratives riddled through the Cut video, as well as the video in its entirety being a narrative. To start off, narrative needs to be defined. Palczewski, Ice, and Fritch (2012) define a narrative as something that describes an event, often implies causation, and engages the interest of an audience. Narratives also contain stories, characters, themes, and cause and effect. The Cut video, “Divide Us Into Democrats & Republicans | Lineup | Cut”, is a narrative within itself. The overall narrative of the video is the idea that we are not defined by stereotypes, and we are constantly categorized by people. This is shown through the development of the strangers as well as how the viewpoints of the categorizers were changing. By the end of the video, each of the categorizers found themselves to have learned a lot and even if they did not necessarily agree with different viewpoints, they still learned from it. As Karlos said, who was one of the categorizers, “You don’t have to agree but you have to respect each other”. Not only is this his specific narrative for the video, and his point of view, but it also outlines the whole video very well. It creates a unifying narrative, told by one of the characters themselves.

There was also the narrative of how people are categorized, which was mentioned shortly above. Throughout the video, all of the categorizers were making assumptions based off of just a few short sentences or even solely based off of attire. The categorizers filled in their own narratives based off of their experiences with Republicans and Democrats and typically based their decision off of that. Some quotes or moments that stood out as telling a narrative was when Dae grouped someone as a Republican largely just because of their shoes, or their opinion about Taylor Swift. Something even as simple as age when Bjork asked a young woman how old she was, and she responded with 18, her first answer was Democrat. In the case of Bjork, she had created her own narrative based off of age and that’s all she needed to fill in the rest of her story. A negative narrative also could be told against Democrats as displayed by this video. At the end of the video, Bjork says “I need a drink after this.. If you guys want to come you’re invited”. When she extends the invitation, she only turns around to the group of Democrats to her right. Now this could be on the account of Cut and how they edited the video. Maybe they cut out Bjork looking at the Republicans as well, or maybe she really did just extend the invitation to the Democrats, who she identifies with. Regardless, the narrative was framed/ created so it may seem as Democrats can be very exclusive. It can also show that American parties in general are very exclusive towards one another, and typically stay within their own party. This is solely just one example, but it explains how one person can create a stereotype or a negative viewpoint on an entire group. This can be viewed as a negative narrative for society. Many people I do not want America to be viewed as excluding others, especially other Americans, just because of their political party or general point of view. Although this was only one example, a lot of what was said during the video could paint American parties in a negative light, and give negatives impacts on both political parties. After this video, Democrats can be seen as judgemental and one sided, however, the narrative was also created that way. They had no categorizers who were Republican, so we did not get to see how Republicans would question or categorize people. This decision was up to Cut, and they decided how they wanted to tell their narrative.

There were some positives that came from this narrative as well. Some positives would be that it informed the public about different parties in America, and also the idea that although someone is a Republican or a Democrat, does not mean they fully agree with each side. The video showed that some people were Democratic and still believed in gun control and that people can always change their political party based off of current politics. I feel like these are positive narratives to tell about American politics because it shows we are constantly changing and don’t always fit with what is thought of as the “norm”. This also brings it back to the idea that we are more than just Americans, but human. The whole point of these videos is not just to educate us on politics, but to educate us about human nature. Because of this point, I do think that overall this artifact tells a positive narrative about the importance of understanding our stereotypes and judgements, but still being able to learn from them and become a better person as a result.

An article by Fisher can help further describe narratives and dissect the artifact. One of the main topics Fisher brings up is the idea of narrative paradigm, specifically narrative world paradigm. Fisher explains the narrative world paradigm as: “..human being beings as storytellers indicates the general form of all symbol composition; it hold that symbols are created and communicated ultimately as stories meant to give order to human experience” (1984). To summarize, narrative world paradigm creates people as storytellers and they interpret their own meaning from their own framework. When first watching the video made by Cut, it was unclear if this artifact displayed a narrative world paradigm. Initially it could be seen as a rational world paradigm, which is where people are more rational and make arguments based off of data. However, the more of the video that is seen, you realize there is much more bias involved and the categorizers in the video were not very rational. As mentioned above, Dae based one decision off of the shoes the man was wearing. That was not rational at all, and used no real logic. Instead it was based off of a symbol, stereotype, and/or personal experience, which is very much an example of a narrative world paradigm. This may seem like a negative narrative to obtain from the article, but the end result and final story told by the artifact is ultimately a positive narrative that should be told.

In summary, the artifact discussed did enforce stereotypes and enforced a narrative of Republicans and Democrats, but overall had a positive narrative. It told an overarching narrative of how although we may use stereotypes to categorize people, once we go beneath the surface of looks and simple questions we discover a lot more about who people are, as well as ourselves.

Works Cited

Cut. (2018, November 6). Divide Us Into Democrats & Republicans | Lineup | Cut [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMsuvEGnvPw&t=31s

Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument. Communication Monographs, 51(1), 1-22.

Palczewski, C. H., Ice, R., Fritch, J. (2012). Narratives. In Rhetoric in Civic Life (pp. 117-146). State College, PA: Strata Publishing, Inc.

[thehappydromomaniac]

#NoSurbhiNoIshqbaaaz and #EndIshqbaaazWithShivika

I am an ardent fan of serial Ishqbaaaz. And a diehard fan of Shivika especially Annika. I got hooked to Ishqbaaz in the middle of August 2016 because of Shivaay and since then, no turning back. I have watched almost every single episode of it; cried, laughed, angered, agitated and sometimes baffled by it. Ishqbaaaz is the only series that had so much to give. Not the same old sob story or forced romance or boring, draggy plots. The chemistry between the brothers and the pairs are always beautifully portrayed and became the reason for me to follow the series religiously. Kudos to the writer who has even thought about it, the producer and directors who have given it the appropriate treatment, the entire crew for making it happen and the line of talents whom without, this wouldn't be possible at all.

A couple of days back, a news broke all the diehard fan’s hearts - A generation leap in order to save the show. And the main lead, Surbhi Chandna won’t be part of it as she is reluctant to play an older mother character at this point of time - Totally acceptable.

Fans tripped and begin their social media campaign and other whatnot to save their beloved Annika. I was happy to see the unity they had and the unplanned Twitter trend went viral. The issue needed clarification and the show’s producer, Ms Gul Khan was approached. She too answered all questions given honestly. Dear Gul ma’am, first of all, if you ever get to read this post, thanks for what you have given me; Almost 3 years of good entertainment and for always answering honestly without twisting and turning facts. Your honesty and frank personality has constantly been misconstrued as ego but I understand your stand. Being a creative head and controlling the finances at the same time can be a huge burden which you have handled so gracefully. You are an inspiration. I admire you a lot. Stay awesome. Without you, Ishqbaaz, Shivika, Narbhi wouldn't have been possible at all. You believed in it and you gave life to it. Thank you

Now, coming back to the movement “#NoSurbhiNoIshqbaaaz”. I am thrilled by it and to see the love Surbhi has garnered among the young generation who are now driving this campaign. I agree with them. Surbhi is one of the valves in the heart called Ishqbaaaz. Her exit would mean the heart’s function would be compromised. Destruction is inevitable if she leaves. But what I don’t understand is the hatred that is being thrown towards the producer and writer of the show. I have read multiple tweets and comments on Insta that range from disturbingly mean to misplaced hatred; ego, stupid, money-minded, etc. Totally misplaced!

Why misplaced you may ask, since I am in the mood of writing, here you go. 

1. If not for Gul ma’am, we wouldn't have got Shivika or Narbhi. Gul & Harneet CREATED Shivika pair. Technically, they are the first 2 fans. This decision had to be the toughest for THEM. THEY must be the most frustrated compared to any fan out there. Most fans invest a little time on social media or TV to watch, post, comment and then back to their routine life, either work or studies. But for G & H, this is their bread & butter and the food for their creative soul. They work on a daily basis to bring more and more life for those characters. They have more work to do compared to fans who are locking horns with them. Just because they have strong exteriors and practical point of view, they cannot be targeted for such cyber-bullying. Yes, the current reaction towards them is crossing the limits of constructive comments and reaching the line of cyberbullying. Calling them money minded, egoistic. One even condemned Harneet’s writing meanly. That is cyber-bullying, guys. Thank God, it is not affecting them. Or maybe it does, and they are just not showing it. They might be dealing it their own way. But guys, NOT COOL YAAR!

2. The past few months, we have seen the TRP plummet despite a strong fan following in Social Media. The strong fan following did not reflect where it should. Do you think TRP is child's play? This is not a charity organization. This is a business. Most of the fans are educated. You are supposed to be able to analyse this logically. Not impulsively. TRP rates reveal how loved a show is. If viewers don’t watch & numbers don’t show, the channel can only interpret it as “People are not interested in it”. Therefore, it will be pushed to some time slot where it won’t get much appropriate attention. Sponsors or ad times will be affected. These are what feeds the show's finances in the long run - A constant gain of profit or $$$ is needed to cover the production costs, the crews' salary and of course The Actors' salary. And for a show like Ishqbaaz, for the quality I see on screen, it has to cost a fortune. Who is going to give it? You and me? We can’t. But there was one thing that we could have done which we failed - WATCHING THE SHOW IN THE BLOODY TV SO THAT THE TRP DIDN’T GO LOW”. WE FAILED!! 

For a quick read about the importance of TRP for TV programmes, please click the link below. 

https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/what-is-trp-and-how-is-it-calculated-1524137013-1

3. For Ishqbaaz to end, means the entire crew could go jobless and once again pushed to look for other opportunities. Which I know isn't going to be easy. Fans are making all kinds of disapproving noises from outside but no one is seeing straight. Gul Khan opened opportunities, gave the crew & talents a way into our hearts. Without her, Ishqbaaaz would have been just an idea on a piece of paper. Almost 3 years ago, she hired them and had faith in them before you & I even thought of Narbhi. Harneet created Shivika on paper. They did all the work. All we did was praising the talents and creating fan followings & factions. And shamelessly insult the very same people who created it. It's like insulting our best friend's parents even though we know our best friend wouldn't have existed if her parents didn't bear her for 9 months & raised her. Don’t forget, the joy of success and the pain of failures hurts them most.

4. You call her egoistic for clarifying her stand without twisting facts, for her straightforward answers, for standing firm of her decision to save her baby whom she gave birth to. Then, you doubt her sanity. If the channel said we are a small bunch, it is because we are reflecting as small bunch where we shouldn't. We should have shown them that we are big in numbers and support by not letting the numbers fall. I ask all of us. Aren't we egoistic too for not even giving a chance to understand her point of view? We are losing entertainment. She is losing the concept/idea she gave birth to. For all your rants and insulting words, may I ask if WE are willing to contribute financially to maintain the series instead of tweeting & spreading hatred? That would be more beneficial. But the truth is, WE didn't even have to do that. All WE had to do was BLOODY WATCHED IT ON TV SO THAT THE TRP WAS STILL GOOD AND THE SHOW WOULD GO ON WITHOUT ALL THIS DRAMA! 

5. If anyone needs to be blamed, it's those fan factions who instigated each other. First Rudy-Soumya fans fought & created the first ripple. Then, Gauri-Omkara. All that unnecessary jealousy towards Shivika. Shivika fans, on the other hand,  were too proud that they cannot be shaken by those fans. Then the Shivika faction further split into separate factions. One wants more Shivika, another more Omkara-Gauri, how are the makers supposed to satisfy everyone? I read all the nasty comments and immature remarks by one to another. Ishqbaaaz fandom parted ways. The larger faction was of course: Shivika. Shivika fans were bigger in number but not enough to carry Ishqbaaaz on its shoulders all by itself. The truth that all the factions and fandom will not accept is they let their ego affect the entire Ishqbaaaz universe. Even now as they read this, they will be too sensitive to the term ‘ego’ - which they conveniently throw at another person but can’t accept their own fault - most of them will be thinking of nasty comments to throw at me for saying it out loud. This was mainly the reason behind the fall of Dil Bole Oberoi. Fandoms came for its defence when it was scrapped and merged but where was the needed viewership when it was running?

6. Now, let’s talk about the digital power that went viral recently. But before that, we must address the matter of online impressions in Hotstar first - Now, I am from Malaysia. Ishqbaaaz has a substantial fan following here. In the channel we are provided with locally, the episodes are far behind, not the latest episodes. My friends & I constantly discuss Ishqbaaaz as everyone knows I am a crazy fan & that I keep myself updated with the latest episodes and progress as part of my daily routine. My day doesn't begin or end without me watching or even thinking about Ishqbaaaz. But you know the sad part for us here, Hotstar is not geographically accessible here. Even if it is, the lack of subtitles can be a bummer because the biggest market for drama here is the Malay market & the South Indian market. Most of us can’t understand Hindi but guess what; Most of us can’t speak Korea and yet the Korean dramas are successfully running here, thanks to subtitles. Ishqbaaaz’s Tamil version was utter nonsense for me as the voices did not give the same impact as the original voices. So, I chose to watch it online via any other sources possible. Mine was an act of desperation.  Not a day goes by without me opening Hotstar, just in case they have made it accessible; Disappointment on daily basis. If Hotstar was available and the subtitled option was available, maybe, just maybe, we could have helped with the global rating but that’s as much as we could have done. The local impression is still the major factor. Which again, whom to blame? Gul & Harneet? Absolutely not! I BLAME those online attention seekers who desperately needed followers and likes in social media that they began posting entire episodes on Insta. The fact is - those people are the biggest reason for all this Pehla Huva Raita. With an easier option to just watch it on Insta, Hotstar was neglected. So, we lost our online numbers as well. Now we don’t even have that ground to defend. Think about it!

Ratings are specific. Entertainment is a business. It survives on its value to bring profit. It is sad to see the fandom is made of a majority of young girls who are supposed to be educated and who are in full capacity to analyse this but are driven by unreasonable hate and anger. We are fans of Annika who is loving, responsible, forgiving, nurturing, fighting for justice without hurting people around her, coming up with quirky but practical solutions, who respect the older people in her life; and yet the girls following her seem to act brashly, unlike her at all. She fights for what she thinks is right but never at the expense of bashing another. Do you see the irony here? You idolize her but failed to follow her good footsteps. And also, I read a few comments about Annika being portrayed as crying a lot lately. Yes, she cried because she is not an emotionless robot. she is just like and me; going through shit on daily basis. But she doesn't lose hope. Annika rarely gives up. Scientific researches have backed that strong people do cry more but they don’t give up. Life can’t be rosy all the time. Without struggle, life becomes boring. and if you think her character has no oomph anymore, maybe it is time to revamp, don’t you think?

And then I see some posts calling to boycott the series now. BRAVO! Just brilliant. I can understand if you want to boycott it after Surbhi is out. But now, while she is still in it, trying her best to bring the numbers up again with the hope that her fans won’t fail her? That’s just brilliant. Instead of helping her, you want to boycott, bring down the numbers and prove Gul ma’ams point? You sure you are a fan? Coz, your actions are not reflecting it. You are supposed to watch it even more now, encourage people around to watch so that the numbers increase exponentially. The same spirit you showed in the Twitter trend, you have to show in front of your TV. Campaign for more people to watch it on TV, your family, neighbours, friends, crushes, etc. Report all the accounts that are conveniently posting the full episodes on Insta. Even if they post a day after, for fans who are convenient with it will go back to their account instead of going to the correct source; HOTSTAR. Pictures seriously won't do much harm unless the pictures show the entire scene. If it shows one juicy scene, it will trigger people’s curiosity to watch it. The real culprits are those who post the episodes. That is not loving. You are butchering Surbhi’s talent for your own greed to get more followers and likes. You want people to go to your account instead of TV and HOTSTAR. So, you are increasing the possibility for the numbers to go down and thanks to that, makers need to look into other angles which have directly affected SC now. So, blame them, not the makers.

The makers have tried and are trying many angles, plot after plot. Seriously, I have followed another Indian series before (which I am not going to name) with the unchanged plot for more than 3 years now. Before the leap, they lead pair didn’t get along, villains always separating them, went on in a circle for years until I got fed up. Leap after leap, the same plot. Even after a major leap, once again the same. The villains always get the better out of everything. The TRP is high still. But that is not the case for Ishqbaaaz. Harneet has given brilliant character progress for the leads, the chemistry between the pairs and who can deny the brilliant love of the Oberoi brothers. Villains are always defeated with Obros & Obahus’ togetherness. No other drama out there did that. And yet, all her efforts are forgotten and you are blaming her for her writing? Her plots are smart. And yes, it is a series end of the day, and it has to have some masala and some ups and down. The plots did get boring at some point but always managed to bounce back. Different angles had to be explored.Y ou think they thought Shivika would be a craze when they first introduced them to us? They just did it by hoping it would and it did. Just like that, they tried coming up with plots after plots but some failed. No one and nothing is perfect. We are all humans and we are all flawed.

For a series named ISHQBAAAZ, the fandom is sure showing a lot of hatred. That won’t solve this. Only love would. Stop fighting and focus on uniting. Start a mission to prove to Gul ma’am and the channel that the fans can BRING BACK GOOD TRP if they unite; THEN, YOU ARE ALL TRUE FANS.

Gul ma’am, I don’t know if you would ever get to read this. I hope it finds its way to you. I know your action is merely to keep the show running. I can understand that you are the most affected party in this. I used to work in the TV industry, so I know a little about how it works. I don’t agree with most of the things that are said to you. But there is one thing that I think might have worked. - Marketing is very important for all products. Ishqbaaaz (just as much as I am emotionally attached to) is also a product. It has a good fan following but something is misplaced. I don’t know what but there are some things that could be done to help get it back on track. I believe in doing everything doable possible before moving on. If you have the same belief, you may read further.

You have seen better numbers for the show before, so you do know that it is not impossible to bring back those numbers. And you can’t be taking everyone’s suggestions for the plots, etc. It is your drama. Your baby. Plots aside, here are some marketing suggestions. I don’t know how effective these could be. But we will never know if we don’t give it a go.

1) Urge the casts to posts videos in their Insta & Twitter urging them to watch it on TV or Hotstar. Their fans will listen to them.

2) Initiate a campaign - throw a contest; A watch & win contest. Real-time contest where they have to answer within 10 minutes of the episode end on TV, via SMS or online. This contest should not be posted in Hotstar and should be an exclusive TV contest. The prize could be a dinner session with the Ishqbaaaz team or the lead pair or either one of them. This could encourage the fans to watch it on TV.

3) I don’t know if Ishqbaaaz has a digital marketing team. If you do but most fans are unaware of it, it means the team needs to up its game. The digital team has to overshadow all the fandom or better, work along. Your team could both look out for accounts that violate and post episodes, report and block it and also join forces with the active fan clubs by feeding them exclusive pics and vid bits in exchange for turning the traffic back to where it should be; TV and HOTSTAR. Again, an online HOTSTAR exclusive contest with probably signed merchandises as prizes could be a good hook.

4) Please consider the ASEAN market for HOTSTAR. Maybe we could help too.

I believe the redux is about to end. Just matter of Shivaay & Annika’s confession. Once the redux ends, I assume the next is going to be exploring the pregnancy track. All of us fans have been waiting for this to happen. Seeing Shivika’s parenting skills have been long dreamt by all of us. We really hope to see that. If even that doesn't work, then probably nothing much can be done to avoid the generation leap. But frankly, it would be much graceful to end it with Shivika. Ishqbaaaz is synonymous with Shivika and Obros, taking it away means taking the essence of Ishqbaaaz away. Though, I don’t think I am in any position to condemn your attempts to breathe new life to the series. Only you know how much investment of time, effort, blood, sweat and money has gone into this. It is easy for us to tell you to kill it with grace, but you are the one living the pain. In many ways, i can associate myself with Annika’s character as in real life I am as emphatatic. I am quirkier and even more stubborn than Annika though. Thank you for showing me a reflection of myself.  

If anyone is going to argue that other successfully running dramas are also available on Instagram but it doesn't affect their TRP, it simply means, their fandom is strong enough to watch it on TV and don’t allow other factors cloud them or disintegrate them. They are doing their job right. Now, it’s our turn. Seriously, if I am part of the makers, for all the inappropriate hatred showered, I would lose my interest to even think of making it better. They must be highly motivated to deal with all this and still go on with this tiring job. Anyways, spamming inboxes, ambushing the offices, trending helps a little. But you know what will help the most? WATCHING ISHQBAAAZ ON TV! LET THE TRP TALK TO THEM COZ THAT’S THE RIGHT LANGUAGE TO GET THE MESSAGE ACROSS!

Last but not least. Thanks, to everyone for reading this long post. I hope the series that has woke me up everyday feeling good will not end too soon. And yes, I support #NoSurbhiNoIshqbaaaz and #EndIshqbaaazWithShivika

Constructive comments are welcomed.

Insta: @arulkc

[femmesfollesnebraska]

Artist Feature: Kara Dunne

Pleased to present this q-and-a with artist Kara Dunne. All words and images (c) Kara Dunne...

A Trailer is a Castle on Its Side

Where are you from? How did you get into creative work and what is your impetus for creating?

I like to say I’m from Vermont because that’s where I was born and most likely will end up someday.  Currently I live in Massachusetts.

My observation skills got me into creative work.  I was always good at drawing from observation growing up, and in general observing things that were odd or quirky in the world.  Once I tapped into these heightened skills of seeing things in a new way, I think the gift of creativity followed suit.  Once you are super-honed into the world around you, you naturally start making unusual connections that you’d like to share (secretly in hopes that you may be the first one to make them of course).

As a practicing artist over the years, my work accumulates around me in boxes and flat file drawers.  And since I mostly create multiples of things, sometimes I feel like an unintentional hoarder.  But the thing is, unlike a hoarder, I don’t want to hold on to the stuff I make. I have increasingly felt the “what is the point of producing all this stuff?” question that is not unique to the artist’s experience.  I can relate to the: “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, then it doesn’t make a sound” concept.  If I make work that remains in my flat file, then it too, remains silent.  So what is the point?  I can only amuse myself for so long by producing for myself.  One needs an audience.  Coming from a performance background, audience interaction for me was always the most exciting part of the practice.  I’ve recently made it my main goal as a printmaker to reach an audience with my work by finding new ways in which I can just give my prints away.  I’ve never wanted to sit with my stuff at a table making puppy dog eyes in order for people to stop and buy something from me.  No surprise that I was terrible at selling girl scout cookies.

Tell me about your latest project and why its important to you. What do you hope people get out of your work?

Just before the world shut down, which for me was a year before the pandemic because my time was happily consumed as a new mom, I had just finished a long term research project that connected the agrarian and urban versions of what it meant to be a shepherd and gather something.   It compared the idea of a shopping cart attendant at the grocery store to that of a traditional shepherd gathering and caring for a flock of sheep.  The final result from my years of research into this concept was a limited edition artists’ book, titled, Shopping Cart Shepherds.  Printed on a letterpress, it combined drawings, screen-prints and interviews from my conceptual journey that began in 2012 when I spent time in a small town in Ireland (and yes, around sheep and people who raised sheep).  I met a local man in his eighties named Tom Tarpey, who had been raising sheep for about thirty years at that point.  Strangely enough and quite a rarity in Catholic history, he was the retired priest of the town.  He had left the church in order to marry the love of his life. Once a shepherd of the people, he became a shepherd of sheep.  What a rare find!  I thoroughly enjoy my work when I can interact with the world more directly; when my artistic research connects me to people in places I have never been and with whom I remain in contact with.  I have all these great big ideas, and usually I will be hesitant at first (shy?) to make connections with the community in order to see those ideas come into fruition, but ultimately things pan out in one way or another.  For example, when I came home from Ireland and was blabbing about sheep, a friend gave me a newspaper article about traditional Basque shepherds still working in this country- in the mountains in Idaho.  For a long time, the article was taped to my wall as a reminder to contact some guy I read about named Henry Etcheverry.  In 2014 I was awarded a residency at a fabulous spot called Surel’s Place (thank you so much Surel Mitchell), and it gave me the opportunity to the make necessary connections out there for this book.  Needless to say, it was an amazing experience and the Etcheverry family embraced me like one of their own; and I learned a lot about sheep.  I now consider them my extended west coast family.

110 copies of the book, Shopping Cart Shepherds, exist (that’s all I could afford to get printed) and inside the back cover it asks the reader to pass the book along to someone else once they finish it.  It is my hope that the ideas in this book will travel and reach more than 110 people.  (More trees falling in more forests?)  I have given away most of the copies at this point, both to people I know and don’t know. The books serve as messages in bottles- it’s honestly difficult to not to have control over where they go, but I guess an artist never really knows where their artwork will end up after it is purchased anyway.  Perhaps my books are mostly buried in the sand dunes of someone’s office book pile, or they have actually reached new beaches far far away.  I will never know.

Since completing this major work, all of my ideas for making prints have the underlying purpose of getting out into the world and reaching an audience.

I find certain design elements of architecture to be amusing, and often make work about the structures around us, as they are extensions of our culture and can change with popularity just like anything else.  Cupolas, ultimately a very useful and functional architectural ventilation add-on to barns and other large buildings, have been on the rise where I live.  Decorative cupolas mainly, seem to show up on top of garages overnight, like cherries atop sundaes.  (Makes the sundae and the house look better).  I made an edition of screen-prints based on this idea- a vanilla sundae with chocolate sauce and sprinkles in a fancy glass serving dish…with a cupola on top.  To get them out to cupola-adorning people, I made up a survey of questions about cupolas.  I printed the survey onto paper door hangers and distributed them.  The survey could be cut out from the door hanger as a postcard and mailed to my special P.O. box in town.  If the survey was sent back, that household would receive an original artist print.  I had the post box and distributed the door hangers for a few months before I had to stop the project because of the emergence of covid.  I had received at least a dozen responses at that point, and mailed out a portion of the edition.  I’d like to start it up again at some point.    

My next print- based community outreach project idea is in process now and will involve restaurant placemats.  I just need to make some local restaurant connections.  (Another pre-pandemic idea forced to simmer on the back burner).   Here’s the basic idea.  A table at a restaurant is the perfect gallery space.  It is especially ideal because it is the location where a group of people will sit and wait for a long period of time together with nothing else to do but sit and chit-chat in one place.  Not even in a gallery do you have the same group of people staying near each other and talking for longer than fifteen minutes in front of a single artwork.  

A paper placemat at a restaurant is viewed for a longer period of time than a work of art on a gallery wall.  It is hard not to look at a placemat- it is one of the few places to look while waiting for food.   I will use the format of the dining placemat as a way to bring fine art into the everyday world. I believe an etching is the perfect kind of print for this project.  An etching is considered the finest of fine art printmaking, mainly because the process of making an etching plate is just as time consuming as printing the edition itself.  Also, it would be perfectly ironic if a plate made a placemat.  And the thought of such a sacred piece of paper so carefully processed as an art work that should end up underneath someone’s sweaty beer glass and dinner plate is simply…exciting to me.  Equally, the thought that a restaurant guest may decide to not get it messy because they want to take it home is the kind of leave-it-to-chance scenario that I gravitate to as an artist; it forces me to relinquish my control and challenges the idea of art as an artifact.  For the viewer, the idea plays with the preciousness of “art” and the context in which we view a work of art (in a gallery vs. the real world).  For the restaurant owner, it may also bring more business and create a new kind of hype attracting more customers.  Let’s say I print a series of five placemats, and if people collect all five placemats they get a free limited edition non-placemat print worth X amount of dollars.  Or maybe they collect all five and get ten dollars off their next meal.  Something like that.

This project connects directly with the public and gets the fine art print into the hands of the everyday person.  The imagery within the frame of the placemat will vary- from beautiful local scenery and landmarks (as everyone enjoys a pretty picture), to several different designs that will engage the table with non-phone related activities- like a dining room scavenger hunt or a list of dinner conversation starters, as well as other designs that are more cerebral and open to interpretation, serving as conversation starters themselves (with digestion friendly, witty imagery).  It is also my intention to make one of the placemats at each table have a QR code with a link to a video of how the placemat was produced, essentially educating the public about what an etching is, and moreover- what printmaking is.  

Considering the political climate, how do you think the temperature is for the arts right now, what/how do you hope it may change or make a difference?

The climate is quite volatile right now, to say the least, and I think artists have a responsibility now more than ever to connect people from both sides of a political issue in order to start a meaningful conversation.  I think the temperature for artists right now is great- get in the pool!  Art always impacts at least one person looking at it, so that’s something.  Art is mainly a non-confrontational way to interpret something about the world that needs to change for others who may not understand why change needs to happen.  The best example I can think of within the visual arts is installation and involves statistic- based information.  For example, a person may come across a beautiful sculpture of a sea monster made from plastic cups.  Then they read about the work and how two million cups were used to make the work and that two million cups end up in the ocean every day; that person now has the physical representation in front of them of what two million actually means and it is forever burned into their mind. That person can stand next to the giant sculpture of cups and can better understand what the number means in relation to how it impacts the environment.  A real life artwork that is forever burned in my mind like this is a video piece by the ceramic artist Ehren Tool called the ‘1.5 Second War Memorial’.  In it, every 1.5 seconds a cup is shot and breaks. Each cup represents a human life.  You would have to watch the video for  eight minutes to get to the number of people who died in the Gulf War (Tool is a veteran of that war) and watch the video for two years to get to the number of total casualties in WWII.  

Artist Wanda Ewing, who curated and titled the original LFF exhibit, examined the perspective of femininity and race in her work, and spoke positively of feminism, saying “yes, it is still relevant” to have exhibits and forums for women in art; does feminism play a role in your work?

More often than not, feminism lies under the surface of my work.   How can it not, as I am living as a woman in this world?  Feminism is always going to be relevant.  It does not end, it is forever in existence; Feminism should not be considered as waves of the past, but as the water itself. I hate that ‘feminism’ is still considered a ‘dirty’ word.  Mostly I experience this as a high school teacher, when every so often I will have a male student who expresses their thoughts about what they think feminism is and after I cringe, mostly internally and sometimes externally, I sadly realize that this wrongly informed opinion comes from the belief system of the parents.  I try my best to inform them of what is true and false without becoming pushy; it is my hope that these particular students gain more perspective in the world through life experiences once their bubble becomes bigger-  and of course once their bubble of close-mindedness has popped.

Ewing’s advice to aspiring artists was “you’ve got to develop the skill of when to listen and when not to;” and “Leave. Gain perspective.”  What is your favorite advice you have received or given?

One of my first professors, Nick Tobier, had a five line mantra of sorts that he told us to write down during his first lecture.  

“Public space is yours to take.

Reveal the things that are hidden.

What you see has been filtered for you.

Let private notions become public.

You can make icons”

-

https://www.karadunne.com/

~

Les Femmes Folles was a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world. Editor Sally Brown retired from active blogging after 10 years in 2021, but still accepts submissions. sallery_art@zohomail.com https://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/callforart-writing

Check out the 10th anniversary LFF exhibit, Feminist Connect, here:

https://www.les-femmes-folles-feminist-connect.com/

[moonbittern]

im exhausted and have been dealing with sensory overload all day so it seems like a great time to make an unnecessarily long-winded post about gallifreyans + language

(before we start i want to clarify that i largely operate on my own sense of canon so this is going to be part actual canon, part ignoring canon, and part making shit up) (but largely the latter)

doctor who likes to do the “one language per species/planet” thing, which is a very common scifi pitfall but it’s wrong and im against it. if you’re going to pull out any sort of “one culture/language/etc per species/planet” thing and there’s more than 10 people in your species/on your planet - well, first of all, you’re wrong, but second of all there is going to be a story behind why things are so lacking in diversity, and it’s not going to be a good one.

now, honestly, gallifrey is a better fit for the above than most scifi planets, if only because rassilon is The Worst and gallifreyan society is pretty strictly controlled. it’s easy to imagine that there is, at the very least, one Proper Gallifreyan Language with some other Less Acceptable Gallifreyan Languages that the prescriptivists all turn their noses up at, and that the end result is very little in the way of linguistic diversity.

HOWEVER.

i would like to suggest the exact opposite - that gallifrey is extremely linguistically diverse. like, ridiculously. like, how in the world can you even sustain that language:people ratio.

(honestly, i only really thought of this bc it gives me the opportunity to come up with a lot of fun language headcanons and to make a lot of conlangs, but i think my explanation makes sense, and everything’s more enjoyable for me this way and do i need an excuse?)

i’ve seen people interpret the 1-2 comments the doctor makes about language as them not being fluent in very many and largely relying on the tardis translation circuits to get around, but given that we’ve heard them speaking languages that are just as alien to them as they are to us, i prefer to think that the doctor is legitimately fluent in a ton of languages and that they have some amount of control over what languages onlookers hear them speak via the translation circuits. nine made a comment about knowing billions of languages, which is almost certainly an exaggeration but still evens out to “a fuckton”, and im willing to take them at their word.

my point being is that even if you gave a human being centuries with which to do nothing but study languages, they wouldn’t be able to achieve fluency in that many (even if we’re assuming said human being was cognitively wired in a way that was compatible with those languages, which isn’t a guarantee but, you know, scifi) and obviously the doctor does a lot more with their time than learn languages. i tend to think the doctor is naturally good at languages, but being good with languages doesn’t bridge that sort of gap, and imo the logical conclusion is that gallifreyans are extremely quick to take up new languages and on top of that likely never lose their language-learning sweet spot (humans lose this...well, it’s complicated, but it’s around the age of 7, which is why it can be so hard to learn new languages as an adult).

so, then, how might that affect linguistic diversity? imo it’s likely to sort of trickle down into rapid linguistic evolution (well, maybe just relatively rapid, but still), and while there are theoretically ways they could force standardization, i ask: would they want to?

the destruction of minority/marginalized languages - intentionally or otherwise - is a distressingly common occurrence here on earth. but we’re a species that loses its ability to acquire native fluency in new languages after our first decade of being alive and struggle to acquire any sort of fluency in the less than a century we have to live after that. if we take everything i’ve said until now to be true, gallifreyans - with an average lifespan up to at least several centuries if not several thousands of years, depending on your feelings about who can regenerate etc - can easily acquire fluency (possibly even native fluency, if their brains don’t distinguish between the first language they learn and the ones that follow) throughout their entire lifespan. which, again, may make their languages evolve and differentiate quickly, as presumably it makes basic things like picking up new words and phrases easier as well. it also means that high linguistic diversity doesn’t create many communication barriers, bc you probably speak every language you need anyway, no matter how many that is.

(not as many as the doctor, bc the doctor’s a deviant who willingly associates with aliens; but still)

so we’ve got a situation where the chapters are almost certainly divided by language. socioeconomic classes are likely divided by language, at least to a point. individual houses may cluster into language groups, and likely have their own dialects. you probably have a distinct idiolect that you only use around close friends/housemates/family - bc said idiolect would have developed around them, so they’ve had the chance to learn it. there’s a lingua franca (or two, or three, or ten) used for inter-chapter and inter-class (and possibly inter-house) communication. you speak A Lot of languages and all of them are gallifreyan and they exert a lot of influence on each other, but you’re also very aware of what languages are appropriate to use with what people.

which brings me to my next point: gallifrey is kind of awful and very much a dystopia, and not trying to actively stamp out certain languages doesn’t mean certain languages aren’t looked down upon or that language isn’t used as a tool of oppression.

the first point is familiar to us and probably speaks for itself. aristocratic prydonians probably think the languages that are associated with cerulean shobogans are awful and ugly and inferior, and so on.

the second point i think deserves a bit more discussion. gallifreyans are big on education, but there are limits to who gets what sort of education, and even if you acquire languages easily, you can still be denied access to learning those languages.

i imagine the higher up you are on the socioeconomic ladder, the more languages you have the opportunity to learn. depending on who you are and what sort of job you’re planning on getting there may be some languages lower down on the ladder that you need to learn, but honestly a lot of people probably don’t bother; classism runs deep, and you always have the cross-class lingua francas. you do probably learn languages at your level that are spoken in other chapters, just in case, but obviously your chapter’s languages are the best (plus those handy lingua francas!) so again, why bother speaking the others much?

what you are not allowed to do is learn languages that fall above you on the social ladder. im sure some people get past that restriction, but for the most part it doesn’t happen, and there is oh so much that can be done with that. people can have snide conversations in your presence that you can’t prove have anything to do with you; certain educational materials/scientific journals/etc are written in languages you’re unfamiliar with, therefore effectively blocking you from learning about subjects considered above your station; you may not be able to read signage in certain areas; the possibilities are endless and if you’re thinking that any of that sounds suspiciously similar to real-life things that happen on earth, well, you’re not wrong.

(a lot of the above probably also applies to writing systems and there’s also probably unique things to say about that but honestly im not super knowledgeable about scripts and im tired so i will leave it at that)

(could also probably make a whole ‘nother post about how gallifreyan society handles aphasia (i.e. not well) but again, tired and not my area of expertise)

language, guys. language.