#I didn’t see any promotional art of it being an archer in this form

[pokemonfrommemory]

Hello from ancient Japan :)

[riza-quevada-blog]

Summed Up in Seven Artworks

I decided to synthesize my learnings by looking at the works around me. Through this, I wanted to practice my critical abilities in consuming these works and the implications of it, and not just take it as it is. 

Picture Source

Using the four planes of analysis, I will be analyzing one of my favorite BTS songs, “Answer: Love Myself”. Firstly, the tune of the song is upbeat and light, giving a positive feeling to the listener. The melody would make the listener sing along and lift their spirits up a little. Secondly, the lyrics and the message it contains adds to the positive feeling its melody provides. For a little background, the song is about accepting and loving yourself despite all the flaws and the pains. 

Loving myself might be harder Than loving someone else Let’s admit it  The standards I made are more strict for myself

The message evokes the listeners’ emotions especially if they resonate with what they are saying. To dive deeper into the context of the work, it’s entitled “Answer: Love Myself” which is part of the album “Love Yourself: Answer”. This album is one of their albums under the Love Yourself trilogy in which they promoted self-acceptance and self-love. BTS had been making music since 2013, delving into topics that relate to the youth such as the problematic school system, romance, beauty of friendships, and the self. 

I value this work in high regard due to personal reasons. It is more than just a song for me as it affected my life and how I view myself greatly. I can say the BTS’ purpose of influencing the youth positively is a success to me as an individual.

However, I could not say the same for other people. Some would refuse to listen to it just because they don’t understand Korean, or because it isn’t the genre they prefer. Despite that, I respect people’s perspectives on this song and BTS in general. This is what most fans of any artist lack. It made me realize, as I got more and more involved with fan culture, that most fanatics do not accept criticisms made towards their idols and regard them as the best among others. I find this very problematic and if you, as a fan, aren’t critical about the fan posts you consume and share, you may be part of the toxicity.

My Essay: Reading the Image

Reading my essay once again, I got deep into elaborating on the details seen in the work and the context surrounding it. However, I wasn’t able to evaluate it against the historical and present context. Historically, the “Procession of Archers” may be considered as a good artwork as it shows the usual style and theme of art back in the day. Printing was a common technique used before the invention of photography, so this type of work may be seen a lot. On the other hand, I honestly think this would not be appealing to the people of today. It may be valued as part of history, but if an artist were to create a print similar to this style, it wouldn’t be as appreciated due to the more modern ways of creating art available today.

Picture Source

In terms of art and reality, an industry that isn’t usually talked about comes to mind: the porn industry. To the extent of my knowledge, the portrayal of sex and women in pornography is incredibly toxic and harmful. Porn sites are packed with images that are more centered on women, making it seem that most videos are catered to men. This further perpetuates the concept of the male gaze; in fact, you won’t be able to see many videos catered to women’s needs. Additionally, the porn industry represents modern and postmodern simulacra: this industry capitalizes on peoples’ needs and uses the labor of (mostly) vulnerable people who had no choice but to do sex work. Furthermore, rape, abuse, child pornography, among others, are the most common illegal and unethical actions that a great number of porn videos show (although not explicitly). These are often just hinted and glossed over with an unrealistic plot and acting; if you’re not critical to the videos you consume, there’s a huge chance you may internalize these harmful notions.

I am not saying that porn is bad, as I do believe that sex work is work (but only if it’s consensual), but the body that governs this industry allows harmful (virtual) realities to take place on people’s screens, which may transcend dangerously to the actual world if these viewers aren’t critical.

Check out: @everydayimpunities on Instagram

The podcast I did with my group mates was honestly enjoyable to work on since it challenged me to think deeper about the realities presented by the work of art we chose. We picked the Instagram account @everydayimpunities which features pictures taken during the actual scenes of various social injustices nationwide, and sometimes outside the country. We tackled the work from different angles and perspectives and identified its role in the development of art. My main takeaway from this is that art always had a powerful impact on people’s awareness of social and political issues, but due to our technology today, it is even more powerful and wide-reaching. However, it also worth noting that there are still some risks and dangers in this modern technology. Although we have freedom of expression, people of power abuse their abilities to silence those who speak against them. It may be easy and convenient to just hit the Tweet button whenever we have something to say, but there might be grave consequences if we do it carelessly.

Picture Source

Adding on to the topic of BTS and K-Pop, the rise of BTS showed me the internalized superiority of the Western world. Even before, there’s this ugly perception of K-pop that made it seem like it’s ‘low art’. In the Philippines, K-pop fans were looked down upon for idolizing artists who “just sing and dance” and male idols who they called “gay” (as if it’s an insult) for wearing makeup. K-pop may be getting into the mainstream nowadays, but the rise of BTS constantly shows how Western media (and its people) are reluctant to accept an industry of talents just because they do not produce music in English. Although the said band is getting so big, they are still often mistreated by the media since they are people of color and produce music in Korean. They are treated like an “other” all the time despite being as, if not more, talented as these huge mainstream artists. In other words, they aren’t valued as artists the same way society values big singers such as Beyonce, Drake, and the like. Their songs and their listeners are often judged upon with haters saying, “why do you even listen to that? You don’t even understand it” as if translations of their wonderful messages aren’t available on the net. There’s this symbolic violence in how locals and the media react to uprising POC (people of color) artists, making it extra hard for them to enter the global scene. This issue can also be seen in other forms of art like the recent release of “Parasite” by Bong Joon Ho which achieved a well-deserved recognition but also garnered condescending criticisms from racist people.

Watching our video essay made me understand the concept behind collecting thousands of fashion items such as footwear, bags, and clothes. Although as a sustainability advocate, I do not resonate nor support it, I can’t hate on people who do collect since we all have different values and belief systems. Collecting dozens of expensive, limited-edition hype shoes that I won’t even wear once in my life may sound absurd and wasteful to me, but for some people, these are expressions and representations of a culture that they are part of. This may apply to collectors of figurines, luxury items, and even fan merchandise as well. They collect these things that have value to them personally, not necessarily aiming to appeal to what society says.

My Identity Map

My identity map consists of objects and symbols that represent who I am to the very core. It may all seem literal and that it speaks for itself, but these images display a much deeper portrayal of my core values. For instance, I am often described as a goal-oriented and organized person, setting systems to achieve my laid-out dreams. To represent this, I used images of my body goals, house goals, business goals, and lifestyle goals. However, these pictures do not only portray my goals and my dreams, but also the values I already have. I am an advocate of sustainability and a student of business. Those two combined, I aim to be a businessperson creating businesses that would be rooted in sustaining life and not centered around making a lot of money and being rich.

Among the prompts listed, I wasn’t able to depict my family and heritage, things to forget, and things to figure out. Instead of putting an image of my family, I inserted an image of BTS who I consider as the people who have created a positive impact on my growth as a person. Moreover, since I initially planned to make this as my dream board which I could look at every day to have a visual representation of my dreams, I didn’t want to put ‘things to forget’  since I would not forget it if I see it every day. (Also because it’s my fault for not knowing all prompts should be visible.)

Overall, I think this map wholly represents who I am and who I can be. As I mentioned in my write-up, I am still growing, therefore this identity map is expected to change over time.

I do not own the pictures used in this Identity Map.

[cawfulopinions]

Fire Emblem Fates: Just Shove Your Children into the Puberty Void

           I really wanted to like Fire Emblem Fates. I really, really did.

           But there’s only just so much anime I can take, you guys.

           Fire Emblem Fates is the fourteenth entry in the long running Fire Emblem series of fantasy, turn-based strategy games. The series has always made itself distinct from other games in the same genre with its strong sense of fantasy aesthetic, its character writing, and smooth, smooth animation, but has always failed to get traction in the West due to its difficulty and occasional iffy mechanics choices. Fates’ predecessor, Awakening, sold very well, however, and proved that there was a place for Fire Emblem in the states, but sacrificed a lot of franchise difficulty, so Fates promised to give an experience that both fans of Awakening and fans of previous Fire Emblems could enjoy.

           It… certainly tried. I don’t think it quite got there, but it tried. But there was a lot going on along the way that makes me question what the hell they were thinking.

           Fates, ultimately, feels like it’s torn between being a Fire Emblem entry and being a cool light novel that all of the kids will like. There’s a lot that feels like it was cribbed from the latest cheap anime on the airwaves, just for the sake of appealing to people who’re into that. It’s a very weird atmosphere and it doesn’t really fit for what Fire Emblem has previously been. There’s some serious war drama, but there’s also some creepy incest stuff involving your non-blood related siblings and a lot of fanservice. There’s this soap opera stuff involving whether you should be loyal to your birth family or your adoptive family, but also a dimension crossing dragon man’s evil army that wants to destroy the world. There’s DLC gating. There’s a lot of DLC gating.

           It’s not a bad game, persay, but… well, there’s a lot to talk about. Let’s dive in.

           Disclaimer: All images in this long pile of salt are either pulled from official Nintendo press releases or official art, from Miiverse posts, or from other sources. Every image is a legitimate image from the localization, at least as far as I can tell. There’s exactly one image I ‘capped myself, and it’s because I wanted a good shot of a booty. Otherwise, I didn’t screencap them. Please excuse my laziness.

            So before we get into my gripes with the writing, let’s talk mechanics. Fates is split into two versions, Birthright and Conquest, with a third route titled Revelations available as DLC. Each of the versions sports a different plotline, with different units and different maps. However, rather than each game being their own separate thing, the three routes actually branch from a single choice point a couple chapters into the game, after which point you’re locked into one version’s storyline.

The three versions offer different gameplay experiences – Birthright has you supporting Hoshido and is most similar to Fates’ predecessor, with access to skirmishes to level your units and a generally easier experience; Conquest has you supporting Nohr and is a fairly traditional Fire Emblem experience, so resource management is the name of the game; and Revelations has you rejecting both countries and running off with the intended blue-haired waifu, and features several unique map mechanics and access to almost all units from both games, opening up strategies and marriage options that aren’t available in the other two versions.

This is basically foreplay for these two.

           These are all pretty ambitious ideas, so it’s a shame that they all just… don’t really work. For starters, unit types are largely divided by kingdom, which creates some weird balance issues. The majority of the units you get while playing with Hoshido are samurai, ninjas, and mages – speedy foot units with low defense –while the majority of your mounted units are Pegasus knights – low defense, low HP flying units who are vulnerable to archers, which Nohr has in spades. Which is a problem, because the majority of the Nohr units… are slower, hard-hitting mounted units who can tank hits way better than you can. When playing on Birthright, you have to work for your mounted and tanky units, as for a long time the only non-flier mounted unit is Silas, a defector from Nohr who brings along the precious Cavalier class, which can reclass into the tankier Great Knight class. It’s a helpful move, but it’s just not enough a lot of the time.

           In a move that’s clearly meant to balance them, Nohr’s units tend to have low resistance, making them more vulnerable to magic. This makes Conquest an exercise in frustration all on its own because the enemy AI on Conquest can afford to throw endless mages and ninjas at you to carve through your resistance and lower your stats with their throwing knives. And, of course, there’s the occasional Spear Fighter with a Beast Killer spear there specifically to fuck up all of your mounted units’ days,

           Only on Revelations do you have access to units to both types, since you get every recruitable unit between both games, save for a few specific plot units who you could only support off with the Avatar anyways. Besides the absolute pile of warm bodies you’re suddenly given, it opens up a larger experience with the game and better strategies you can now put into place… so it’s a damn shame that the route’s only available as paid DLC, and not as the base game.

           Unfortunately, all three routes (but especially Birthright and Conquest) have a particularly damning, unfun issue: their map design sucks. It’s awful. The maps are almost entirely designed around the quality of “how can we make it easy for everyone ever to get swarmed by everything” and it makes everything an exercise in frustration. There’s one particular map in Birthright where you’re storming a fort, and the lead up to the fort is a large, open field, and the moment you move into one enemy’s range, you’ve basically moved into every enemy’s range, and whoever you send up there is about to get swarmed by everything. Which is an issue, because your tankier units are in short supply, and there’s only so much that Pair Up can do to fix everyone’s defensive issues.

This map’s probably the most extreme case, but it’s far from the only one; several of the maps can more or less be described in qualities of either “big open rectangles” or “awful mazes of corridors”. There’s also a surprising dearth of interesting terrain – I think I can count the number of maps with actual forest tiles on one hand, and since the final chapters on both Birthright and Conquest are all indoors, the terrain’s even more limited.

           Making things a bit more interesting is the Dragon Vein mechanic – every map has special tiles that can be activated by any members of royalty you have in your team due to their draconic heritage, causing different effects depending on the map you’re on. These can be used against you or to your benefit, since there are more than a few maps involving you fighting the opposite kingdom’s royalty too. Honestly, it’s probably the shining feature of the game, aside from the rebalanced Pair Up mechanics, and I’d like to see something like it return in later games.

           It’s fairly obvious from how the routes were designed and the various balance issues that appear that the decision to split the game into three full games worth of content meant nothing was really properly balanced. Admittedly, difficulty is subjective, but for me, Birthright, when played on Normal, was disgustingly easy. When played on Hard, it was a ball-raking experience in frustration and bullshit deaths. Conquest remains frustrating for the entire experience, especially if you’re playing on Classic, but it never feels frustrating in a fun way – it always feels like you’re clawing against the game, desperately trying to find a foothold while you’re being relentlessly carved apart by a million ninjas. And for all of their difficulty, Fire Emblem games do generally feel fair about it. It never feels unwinnable unless you’re on, like, Lunatic or some shit. But god, there were legitimately moments in Fates where I felt like snapping my 3DS in half because it felt flat out unfair.

You can change the difficulty mid-game, but you can only turn it down – Hard to Normal to Easy, Classic to Casual to Phoenix, where units, upon dying, come back the next turn. There’s basically no middle ground when it comes to difficulty – either you’re coasting through with absolutely no challenge whatsoever, or the game actually has your testicles in a vicegrip. Doesn’t help that the game gives you a few really good units in the form of your royal siblings, some of which come pre-promoted, and others with their own unique weapons. In fact, Ryoma’s weapons and stats are so good that people have actually soloed Birthright with him.

Beware the lobster man, for his lust for destruction is endless.

           On the subject of weapons, Fates does away with something that’s been a series standard for decades – weapon durability. Instead, the game gives you several weapons with several differing effects – for example, the Sunrise Katana gives the wielder an insane dodge rate, but has a lower strength. Extra weapons can be forged into one another, letting you steadily improve their stats and, over time, make a weapon far superior to the one you started with. This is a pretty contentious subject in the fandom, but honestly? I don’t have any problems with it. Healing staves still have durability, and it means I don’t feel afraid to use my cool weapons like I always do in other Fire Emblems.

           It also carries over the Pair Up mechanic Awakening introduced, with some new balancing to it – now, units can only aid in attacks if they’re standing to the side of the units in question, and only defend if they’re paired up with (on the same space as) another unit. Enemy units can also pair up, which leads to a lot of frustrating moments when you’ve got two heavily defensive units bottlenecking an area and you’ve got to get past them to make progress. Still, it’s an improvement, and I’d like to see it come back in a game with more unit variety, so I could fully take advantage of it.

           Another thing Fates introduces is unique skills for every character – some get bonuses depending on the type of terrain they’re on, or the characters they’re around. Others have conditional bonuses or abilities, like Orochi and Niles being able to “capture” units that can be convinced to join your army, or Sophie being able to strip enemy units every now and then. This is actually a pretty cool thing overall and it really makes me think more about who to use beyond just stats and if I like them or not.

           There’s also been several changes to how supports work, specifically through the addition of the A+ rank and the new class change seals that have been added. While S-rank is still exclusive to units of different sexes (symbolizing them getting married), A+ notes a “best friend” unit of the same sex, and like S-rank, every unit can only A+ rank once. The new Marriage and Friend seals allow a unit access to classes of their maxed out ranks, giving greater variety in the skills and classes they can earn. It’s a nice change. Master Seals are still in, as are a new variant that allows a child unit to upgrade to a promoted class immediately after recruitment if they’re recruited after a certain point in the game.

…but we’ll get to that later.

           There’s also the My Castle, which is an expansion of Awakening’s barracks, and is honestly such a weird part of the game that it barely garners mentioning. It’s where your shops are, and over time you can add more facilities, gather materials to use to upgrade your items and make stat boosting food with, and participate in some faux-multiplayer matches to get points for other upgrades. It’s interesting, but its existence is… odd, especially since the plot explanation for it has to deal with Fates’ weird flirtation with alternate universe bullshit.

…but we’ll get to that later.

           Overall, the mechanical changes are for the better, it’s just they’re marred by a lot of other dumb shit. Like the map design, the terrible balancing, and Jesus Christ, can I just have a knight, please, so I can stop getting punched in the face???

           This is all without getting into the story, writing, and aesthetic, which is some of the most contentious in the franchise for a good reason. It’s, to be frank, kind of bad. It’s weird and anime in ways that Fire Emblem hasn’t really been in the past, and it feels more like I’m playing a not-so-great light novel adaptation than a fantasy war simulator. And it’s not like Fire Emblem isn’t tropey – for how much people love it, Sacred Stones’ plot sure wasn’t winning too many writing awards, and a good chunk of Awakening’s characters are better described by what anime tropes they adhere to – but Fates really goes all in, complete with some of my least favorite tropes: people being prideful about dumb shit, and sibling fetishism, because no light novel style plot is complete without siblings who want to bang the protagonist.

Some, more blatantly than others.

           So here’s the basic outline of the start of the plot: the player Avatar (default name Corrin) is one of Nohr’s princes/princesses, and have been raised in seclusion in a castle distant from Nohr’s capital. Your siblings, who are also children of the king, Garon, have visited you over the years to keep you company and have grown very close to you. After a series of events, Corrin is captured by Hoshido, the neighboring kingdom, it’s revealed that the protagonist was actually born a prince/princess of Hoshido and was kidnapped by Garon in a previous war. In retaliation, Hoshido kidnapped a Nohrian princess, Azura, and raised her among their royalty. A rapid series of events take place following these reveals, with the Hoshidan queen being assassinated through a curse on your sword and the sudden attack of half-invisible soldiers, Corrin suddenly turning into a dragon, and Nohr invading Hoshido, all leading up to the moral choice that marks the version split: do you stay with Hoshido, the family you were born with; do you return to Nohr, the family you were raised by; or do you seek a third path?

           So let’s talk about something that becomes very, very obvious when you start off: Nohr is evil. Nohr is hilariously evil. One of the literal first things that happen after you meet Garon is him ordering you to execute a pair of prisoners who were captured in a recent skirmish. When you don’t execute them, and your brother Leo pretends to execute them for you so you can let them go later, you find out that your siblings have to do this shit all the time and spend a lot of time only really following the letter of the order under ol’ Dad. One of the next things that happens is you walking in on Garon literally praying to an evil dragon skull. Basically every Nohrian army executive you meet who isn’t one of your siblings or their retainers is also some degree of evil and/or stupidly bloodthirsty. When you get to Hoshido, you find out that Nohrian mages have been sending literal animated corpses over to Hoshido to fuck shit up and just letting them do whatever they want, because Hoshido has a magic barrier keeping Nohr from directly invading it around it (in fact, this is why the queen had to be assassinated in such a roundabout way).

           So when the route choice is presented, it’s supposed to be less “I want to be with this family” and more “I want to stop Nohr” and “I want to change Nohr from within”. Or at least that’s the intent. And while much ado has been made about Treehouse’s various translation changes (which I will not be getting into here, because that’s a can of worms I ain’t touchin’), the changes made at the route split were absolutely for the better. In Japan, when you choose to go with your Hoshidan family, it’s explicitly because they’re your birth family. In the NA version, it’s because you can’t reconcile your own morals with what Nohr’s done.

           The weird part is, it really would not have been that hard to present Nohr in a sympathetic light – it’s stated that due to their perpetual night and poor weather, they have always had poor crop yields and had to invade other countries to support themselves, and ultimately it’s Garon’s dickishness that’s perpetuating the war. Previous Fire Emblems have also had antagonistic, but sympathetic enemy armies, including the Plegians from Awakening, who go to war in the first place because their mad tyrant wants revenge for the previous slights of Ylisse. So Nohr’s levels of cartoonish evil aren’t because it’s not a thing the franchise does… it’s because they just didn’t want to put the effort in to make it actually nuanced.

           From the choice point onward, the plots follow three different paths. Birthright’s path is a fairly standard trudge through a Fire Emblem plot. I’ve heard it called the best “plot” out of the two starting routes, but I think that’s more because its plot is actually paced out well and doesn’t spend the first 15 chapters fucking around making you do Garon’s dirty work and complaining about it ad nauseum. What makes Birthright annoying is in the individual plot beats. There’s two distinct instances of characters killing themselves for no goddamn reason that occur during the story, and while the writers clearly want you to feel something during them, the actual reasons and circumstances are so contrived it’s hard to feel anything about it.

*muffled Rihanna plays in the background*

Furthermore, the further you get into Birthright, the more contrived the reasons for your Nohrian siblings to not ally with you get – Elise is blatantly on your side (and gets a storyline death for it), Camilla is clearly considering defecting before some contrived plot bullshit happens to make her want your friends dead again, and Xander and Leo just keep fighting you for reasons. Reasons that are never adequately explained beyond “Me Nohr, you Hoshido, you traitor, blaaaaaaugh”.

           “Contrivance” is the name of the game with Conquest, too, which sounds like it’s going to have a sneaky storyline about you trying to pull a coup on Garon and change Nohr that way, but is actually about you putting down rebellions for him and fucking up Hoshido because you found out that he’s secretly a monster, and the only way to convince your siblings that he’s a monster is to sit him on Hoshido’s magic throne, because the plot device that Azura pulled out of her ass to reveal this to you with was a one-time use. And your character complains about this a lot. A lot. Half of the dialogue between them and any members of the Nohrian army boils down to “BUT WHY—“ and then your siblings rushing in and saying that yes, you’ll do the evil thing, don’t worry about a thing, and then your character resuming complaints. By the end of the game, you succeed on putting Garon on the throne, revealing that he’s a gross monster, kill said gross monster, and then have a surprise boss fight with a possessed Takumi, who had previously appeared to kill himself for inadequately explained reasons.

           No matter which route you finish first (because let’s be real, you have to pay extra for Revelations, so you’re definitely not playing it first), you’re going to be left with a lot of unanswered questions, first and foremost being “Who were those semi-invisible enemies I fought all the time? What was up with that alternate dimension I fell into with Azura that one time in Conquest? Why were Takumi and Garon possessed by weird gross monsters? Why did Azura just suddenly die at the end for no real reason?” Good news: these are all explained if you buy Revelations. Bad news: You have to buy Revelations to even get so much of a semblance of an explanation, because otherwise these plot things are all left completely unexplained. The plot for Revelations barely has anything to do with the plot for the other two versions, too – while Birthright and Conquest are about the war between the two countries, Revelations is about a dragon that went mad, an alternate dimension kingdom, and how basically every problem in the game was because of these two things.

           All routes manage to hit on one of my bigger pet peeves about Fates, though, and that’s that for all the plot tries to be about this moral quandary of the war, it ends up being more of a soap opera about how much it’s tearing you apart to have to fight your siblings, with a lot of very anime bullshit along the way, and by the time you get to Revelations, it’s gone so full anime that it’s not even pretending to be about a war anymore. The weirdest bits of the writing are in the alternate universe stuff, which you’re first introduced to early in the game when they introduce the My Castle, a pocket dimension only the Avatar can access where time doesn’t pass and the army can just hang around and chill. This alternate universe stuff then proceeds to go wholly unreferenced until a brief visit to Valm that takes place in Conquest, and Revelations, where it’s suddenly the crux the plot spins around.

           Or unless you have a kid.

…but we’ll get to that later.

           There’s a myriad number of other things that make the plot feel weirdly anime and amateurish for such a huge production. Azura is pretty much just “Plot Device: The Character”, with the song she sings through the game basically just being “Plot Device: The Song” with how many different things it gets used for (its actual effects, naturally, are unexplained unless you play Revelations). Azura being a songstress in the first place is a very tropey move – singers and divas are frequently very important characters in Japanese media, and having their songs have magical effects is one of those very common tropes that always feels contrived when it shows up. She’s extremely obtuse with her intentions, which turns out to be because of a literal curse that keeps people from talking about Valm (the alternate universe kingdom) without being in Valm (so again, you want explanations for stuff, better buy  Revelations).

           Similarly, Corrin tends to basically stumble onto new powers and weapons as the plot demands, giving the feeling that they’re meant to be a self-insert wish fulfilment character of some sort. In order, Corrin is a member of all three courts of royalty (yes, including Valm’s), is part-dragon, can turn into a dragon, suddenly has a magic weapon reveal itself to them that’s actually the key to saving the world, and spends a large portion of the plot seeking out a massive power boost so they can go fight Garon on his terms. And while there’s definitely something to be said about a character you can customize being meant to be something of a self-insert, since Corrin’s appearance is fully customizable, and since they can support with everyone, have the most versatility class-wise out of anyone, there’s an amount of wish fulfilment fantasy I can take, and we crossed it a while ago here.

           Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Revelations and things that come out there, one of the big plot points is that your birth parents actually aren’t the same as your Hoshidan siblings’ birth parents, and your dad’s actually a dragon. This is something that’s also told to you when you S-rank one of your Hoshidan siblings, in the form of a secret letter your mom left for them, but up until that point on Birthright? You just think you’re partaking in some incest of the highest degree. So if you want to get that explanation without thinking you’re banging your biological siblings? Better buy Revelations.

           Not that any of this makes any of the sibling fetishism in Fates any less creepy. Since the Avatar, like in Fates’ predecessor, Awakening, can marry any character in the game, all of your Hoshidan and Nohrian siblings are fully marriageable. However, a few things are made immediately obvious when you’re interacting with these characters. The first is that both families consider you to be their family, which raises a ton of awful, creepy questions about power dynamics and the morality of fucking the people who raised you. The second is that the developers absolutely wanted you to fuck your siblings anyways, because Elise and Camilla exist.

From left to right: Three potential routes in the mythical bisexual anime dating sim that only exists in my dreams.

           All of the Nohrian and Hoshidan royalty characters are written around specific anime tropes and honestly feel like they could have been plucked from an otome game, or at the very least, a passably written light novel, but Camilla and Elise specifically play into a particular incesty trope-set that’s very common in Japanese media: the sister who wants a more-than-sisterly relationship with the protagonist. Half of Camilla’s dialogue is basically just throwing innuendo at you while simultaneously implying she wants to mother you, leading to a frankly disconcerting combo of MILF-femme fatale-big sister tropes. And just in case you hadn’t gotten the memo yet, Camilla gets an entire CG scene dedicated to showing off her tits and ass on Birthright, while on Conquest, a large part of the ending CG scene is dedicated to the protagonist running headlong into her titties. Subtle.

Elise, on the other hand, is a cute little gothic Lolita little sister who’s always cheering you on and calling you “Big brother!” or “Big sister!” – grating, but standard enough little sister tropes in Japanese media. The problem is that she’s marriageable, and unlike Awakening, where it was implied that the debatably legal characters all had their kids at least a few years into the future from when the game takes place, the children in Fates are all born not too long after characters get married. So either Elise is supposed to be a legal loli (which is creepy), or you’re banging your underage adoptive sister (EVEN CREEPIER).

All of the siblings in Fates have these problems, but Elise and Camilla really get it the worst, because they’re so overt about it. They’re characters whose entire identities are wrapped up in being your sibling, and you can fuck them. Even with them not being your blood sibling, there was a conscious decision to write them in this faux-incesty manner that adds a real creepy sheen to the whole thing. All of the other members of the royalty? They’re dating sim tropes. Ryoma and Xander are dependable, kind of dorky older guys, Leo and Takumi are supposed to be the standoffish, full of themselves ones, Sakura’s the cute, shy one; and Hinoka’s the hot blooded genki girl. And then there’s Elise and Camilla, who fall into two varieties of incest trope, with a double dose of lolicon on Elise’s end.

But hey, while we’re talking marriage options, let’s talk about the other characters in Fates. So a big thing about Fates is that since it’s technically two separate campaigns, both Birthright and Conquest have complete casts and full armies to take with you, with the characters you get determined by which route you’re on. This isn’t inherently a problem (at least until you get to Revelations and you get both casts, minus a few pre-promotes, giving you a massive pile of units you’ll probably never use), but something about the cast feels very incomplete. There’s a lot of character tropes that are reused from Awakening – for example, Subaki is a Pegasus riding retainer for the crown who’s well known for being absolutely perfect at everything, much like Awakening’s Cordelia; while Hayato is a child-like mage who wants to be taken seriously and has been trying to prove himself, much like Awakening’s Ricken.

It doesn’t stop with just tropes though – a few of the characters are wholesale lifted from Awakening, too. Did you like Cordelia, Tharja, and Gaius? Well, I hope you did, because they’re child units on Birthright. This is actually one point where Conquest has a definite leg up on Birthright, because Conquest’s Awakening cameos, Odin, Laslow, and Selena (Owain, Inigo, and Severa, respectively) actually came to Fates’ world using an actual plot mechanic from Awakening, and get a set of DLC dedicated to explaining their presence in the world in more detail. So that’s another paywall on massive plot material, because that’s the name of the game with Fates, but at least the effort’s been put in.

And something that doesn’t really help is a lot of characters seem to be written very differently depending on route and whether you’re in the main story or the supports. For example, Takumi, if you’ve only played Conquest, is a raging asshole. There is nothing good about him, definitely nothing that seems to suggest the popularity he apparently has in the fandom. If you play Birthright, he’s cold and standoffish and jealous, but there’s depth there. But then there’re his supports, and he’s awkward and prideful and somewhat endearing about it. It literally feels like three different characters.

Top: Takumi in Conquest. Bottom: Takumi in Birthright and his supports.

Overwhelmingly, the various Support chains feel better written than the majority of the game. Even with how tropey a lot of the characters are and how sick I grew of them in the main story, I still enjoyed the support chains a lot. Anything involving Mozu pretty much immediately became a feel good, good time, even with the less personable characters. Raging asshole Takumi became likeable through his supports. It legitimately felt like I was reading a completely different story when I got to the supports, and I genuinely wonder if they were written by a completely different writing team.

Fates also does something no other Fire Emblem has allowed before: there’s gay marriage options. There was much ado made about how stupid it is that they’re version locked, as well as the tropes that go into them, but I’ll give Intelligent Designs credit for trying. However, I won’t give them credit for the fact that the options suck ass. The gay marriage options are Niles, an innuendo spouting Nohrian thief with a thing for bondage and enough angsty backstory and hidden darkness to make him a stereotypical yaoi “top” character; and Rhajat, who is literally just Awakening’s Tharja, a creepy Dark Mage with a penchant for curses and is the Avatar’s stalker. These characters weren’t written to actually make them appealing to gay people – they’re written to fit yaoi and yuri archetypes to make them appealing to straight people.

Go away.

And it’s not like I didn’t give them a chance on my own playthroughs – both my Birthright and Conquest avatars were actually genders that matched the gay options for those routes – but as I got through their support chains, I found out pretty quickly that I didn’t want anything to do with either of them. I’m not interested in marrying someone whose only interesting character traits are his love for innuendo and his angsty backstory, or a creeper who wants my vagina because she’s convinced that I’m her fated lover, and is willing to curse everyone to make it happen.

Legitimately, there’s other characters that would have made more interesting gay options, like Silas, the Avatar’s childhood friend who’s dedicated enough to them to defect to Hoshido; and Soleil, Laslow’s daughter who loves girls so much that her personal skill is all about powering her up when she’s around other girls. Why she’s not the gay option, and Discount Tharja is, is beyond me.

There’s something that’s really jarringly apparent about the Fates cast the further you get into it, though. The game really wanted no business with any party members who weren’t conventionally pretty and young. And nowhere is this more exemplified than with certain pre-promotes you can get, the character of Nyx, and the non-recruitable boss character, Zola.

           So in Fates and Awakening, pre-promoted units (units who come to you already as an upgraded class) generally can’t be supported with any party members besides the Avatar. Both games have exceptions (specifically, Frederick and Anna in Awakening and the royal family members in Fates can all be supported with other units besides the Avatar), but that’s generally the rule. It was odd in Awakening, because in previous Fire Emblems pre-promotes usually could still support with other party members.

But something Fates does that Awakening didn’t is that all of the pre-promoted units who can only support with the Avatar are also old. From Reina, a Kishin Knight with visible wrinkles and a lust for murder; to Shura, a vagrant from a Hoshidan border nation who defected to Nohr; to Gunter, an old man who is one of the Avatar’s retainers. It seems like anyone over the age of 20-something is shoved into the “Avatar-only” category of supportable characters, regardless of their apparent depth of character. Some of these characters are also among the few who don’t come back for Revelations – Scarlet, a Wyvern Lord Resistance leader who joins you in Birthright, gets a particularly undignified death when you first go to Valm to justify her lack of involvement.

It’s the kind of thing that really feeds into Fates’ weird, creepy light novel feeling, because that’s not something other Fire Emblems really have done. Awakening had a good amount of visibly older characters who were still fully supportable (Frederick and Gregor come to mind), and previous Fire Emblems had multiple older characters per game and never really called attention to them the way Fates does. But here, every character (save, say, Benny on Conquest) has to be in the age of conventional attractability and look appropriately, and god forbid they don’t, especially if they’re a woman.

The most egregious instance of this is quite possibly Nyx, a child-like Nohrian mage who’s actually old enough to be an old woman. She falls into a long-standing Fire Emblem tradition of “characters who look like little girls but are actually super old”, which are usually among the various Manakete characters of Fire Emblem. These generally range from “wise despite their appearance” (Myrrh from Sacred Stones) to “uncomfortably childlike” (Nowi from Awakening).

Nyx is a rare exception in that she’s fully human, and looks the way she does because of a curse… and she’s also a Dark Mage, so she wears a bikini everywhere. It really does feel like they wanted an excuse to put a kid in a bikini, and used the “she’s really like a hundred years old!” excuse to justify it (which they also did in Awakening, and it was just as uncomfortable there). And yes, you can marry her as a male Avatar, and yes, she will give you a kid. Have fun with that mental image.

And then there’s Zola.

Who wouldn’t want to give this little creeper a hug?

Zola is a character with… very contentious writing, and another character where, in order to get any perspective on him, you have to play Birthright first. In all three routes, Zola is a minor boss who impersonates the Duke of Izumo, a neutral kingdom in the war, and uses this as a chance to try and execute the Hoshidan royal family before getting killed by Leo for his dishonorable behavior. It’s pretty standard Fire Emblem boss fare, and he’s pretty forgettable there.

But on Birthright, Zola lives past that chapter as a prisoner of the Hoshidan army, and this allows him to gain more depth as a character, revealing that despite his cowardly nature, he does have loyalty toward the Avatar and there’s something sympathetic about him. In any other Fire Emblem game, it’s entirely possible he would be recruitable. In fact, he factors into the Hoshidan army’s plans to fight Garon during the theater episode in Chapter 12.

However, by this point, keen-eyed Fire Emblem players have probably already noticed that Zola did not join the army after his “recruitment”, and the plot summarily executes him after taking three chapters to humanize him, and he’s completely forgotten from that point on. The thing is, more morally ambiguous characters are recruited to the Avatar’s team in Fates alone (cough cough Niles cough Rhajat cough), and they’re allowed to stick around. But Zola is executed despite the game clearly showing he’s loyal to the Avatar (he even pleads to Garon to spare the Avatar after he betrays the party) and him having a fully fleshed out character.

As far as I can tell, the only reason Zola is not recruitable is because he is not pretty. He’s a coward whose looks match his personality, and so he was always intended to be cannon fodder. It creates some legitimate questions about the equating of beauty and goodness in Fates, because there’s legitimately no reason why that plot development needed to occur in Birthright considering how that event is handled in Conquest and Revelations. It would have been easier to leave it all out.

So that’s three distinct cases of characters who are over the hump as far as “acceptable age” and appearance goes, and how they’re treated. It’s another thing that feeds back into Fates’ “big budget light novel” feel – you’re not going to see a ton of those with main characters who aren’t conventionally attractive young people, and the characters are generally designed in a way that they’re appealing to younger players and their aesthetics.

And boy oh boy, does this show in Fates’ character design.

While Fates borrows a lot from Awakening, one thing it does not borrow are Awakening’s class designs. Awakening’s designs were generally fairly simplistic, and aside from a few specific things (flying classes’ baffling lack of armor, those… shoulder things on knights, cavaliers wearing toilet seats for neckpieces), they were fairly reasonable fantasy armor. In fact, most female characters, including the prissy aristocrat troubadour Maribelle, wore pants. The downside there was that a lot of classes were gender-locked; Pegasus knights and troubadours were female only, but even so, they didn’t have particularly egregious designs.

Fates removes gender locking for all classes, but the female only designs are often… egregious. By which I mean, everyone wears panties. Everyone wears panties into battle.

Can you please put on some goddamn pants before you chafe your thighs into oblivion?

Hoshido classes, thankfully, generally wear loincloths over their panties, but the egregious lack of pants tends to be really blatant. But Nohr classes tend to be more than willing to let it all hang out there, even if (or especially if) they’re a horse-riding class. Nothing was worse than upgrading my daughter to a Great Knight, only to find out that she was now riding her horse into battle pantsless. I may have explicitly decided to go with a male Avatar for my Conquest run because I found out that the upgraded Nohr noble class just bares her panties everywhere for female Avatars.

Fates has a lot of really weird fanservice in it. The explicit focus on Camilla’s everything, the panty-baring female class designs, the access to a hot spring that doesn’t seem to have any real purpose beyond being there, and being able to strip enemy units with certain weapons all just gives it a really weird atmosphere for a game that’s supposed to be a serious war drama. It’s the same incongruity I get from a lot of recent anime, such as Re:ZERO, which is apparently a serious story, but also gives its generic main character a harem of pretty anime girls who all want to get with him.

A lot of Fates feels like it’s trying to appeal to the most common denominator by emulating what other games and anime are doing, like the dynamics between characters and the related character design, as well as things they felt were the most popular elements of its predecessor, which was the best-selling Fire Emblem game in a long, long time and possibly saved the franchise. So it gives you a massive cast of characters and a dynamic world-saving plot makes pairing them all up a major mechanic, and even includes previous games’ characters as a throwback to people who liked Awakening. And, most bafflingly, it includes Awakening’s child mechanic.

IT’S TIME.

           When two characters of opposite sex reach an S-rank support with each other, they get married, and their child can then join your army after completing a side mission. Awakening reconciled the fact that the parents and children could fight alongside one another through the use of a time travel plot – no one actually has any children over the course of Awakening’s story (besides Chrom, which is part of the set-up for this element); rather, their future children travel through time to help prevent the horrible future that happened in their own world. It’s a major part of Awakening’s plot, and while none of the child characters have major plot relevance outside of Lucina, the fact that they go out of the way to weave the explanation for why they exist into the plot helps ground them, and several of the children’s Supports involve them trying to connect with their younger, past parents now that they’re in a world where their parents are alive again.

           Fates, however, doesn’t use this explanation. Instead, after your first marriage scene, you’re treated to a cutscene explaining that the parents didn’t waste any time getting knocked up, and after the child was born, it was determined it was too dangerous for any kids to be kept around with the war going on, and so the children were sent off to their own alternate pocket universes (or “Deeprealms”) to grow up safely. Because time passes differently there, the children almost instantly grow to adulthood from the people in the army’s perspective, and by the time they’re recruited they’re fully trained, fully capable soldiers ready to go stab the shit out of some enemy soldiers.

Just shove ‘em riiiiight in. Don’t worry about any consequences, it’s fiiiiiiine.

           There’re a lot of stupid holes and questions that pop up as a result of this, first and foremost being the very obvious question of “When did anyone have time to have children?” All of the female characters in Fates are also combatants, so unless they’re all badasses on the same tier as Metal Gear Solid’s the Boss, they probably weren’t fighting at the same time they were pregnant. Also, Fates isn’t very clear about the time frame the game takes place during, but since no one ages significantly, it can’t be more than a couple of years. Since time doesn’t pass while the characters are in their My Castle, theoretically they could have stayed there for the duration of their pregnancy, but unless the gestational period in Fates’ world is significantly shorter than real life human gestational time, that would mean individual characters having to stay in My Castle for periods approaching upon months, at which point they would have their children, and then shove them in the puberty void to keep them safe while the parents go right back to fighting in a war.

           Which brings it around to the next unsettling implication -- the neglect in the children’s upbringing. Fates’ children only aged quickly from the perspective of their parents outside the pocket dimension – inside their Deeprealm, time moved for them at a normal rate, and the occasional visits the parents gave (as indicated in their Supports with their children) were separated by periods of years. Fates does not shy away from showing how this kind of upbringing affected their children – many of them have major gripes with their parents for essentially abandoning them for their own good, and a few of them have developed some odd quirks and delinquent behavior as a result. Several of their recruitment events are about guilting their parents into bringing them along for the war, and it’s a constant subject in their Supports, as well. No one is particularly happy with how the situation worked out in-story.

           The constant statements that it was done for the children’s own good in their Supports and recruitment events really pushes to the forefront how baffling the explanation is, because the game makes it more than clear that it was this distant upbringing that messed the children up so badly. It goes into absurdity if you’re playing Conquest, which features three returning child characters from Awakening as potential parents, who should know what it’s like to grow up with no parents (all of Awakening’s parent units are dead by the time their children travel back to the past) and would probably not want to subject their children to the same upbringing.

           It’s the inclusion of the child mechanic that pushes Fates from a passable, if flawed, game, right into “basically unplayable”. It’s blatantly obvious that Fates was not written with a child mechanic in mind, and that it was added because Awakening’s shipping mechanics went over very well, and they wanted to capitalize upon that. And it’s not like any of the child characters are bad characters--

           Well, most of them aren’t, anyways.

You are not my children. You are a disgrace.

           But ultimately, all they do is serve to give you more units in a game that’s already swimming with units, and end up being a massive distracting bit of bad writing in a game whose writing is already only passable at best. They literally could have been left out of the game entirely, and nothing of real importance would have been lost.

           (Also, it would have forced them to make a lesbian option that wasn’t just “Discount Tharja”. Or at least tried to make it less obvious that they were recycling everyone’s favorite stalker waifu.)

           Fire Emblem Fates is, ultimately, not a bad game. For all of my griping about the map design and unit distribution, there was clearly a lot of thought put into the new mechanics. Forging weapons to make them stronger feels more rewarding than the old durability system, which always ended up boiling down to “Iron swords for everyone!” so you didn’t waste your cool super weapon. And if you can look past the writing, you’ll definitely have a good time with it, or at least end up frustrated in the kind of fun way only Fire Emblem players do. But the obvious DLC gating, the poor writing, and the nonsensical puberty void bullshit make it a very hard game for me to like, and I don’t think I’ll ever get around to playing the third route as a result.

[tristanvswriting-blog]

lit review draft #2

Lit Review

Introduction

From my research as to what is sneaker culture? I’ve come to find that sneaker are far more than shoes, so much is said and thought about sneakers that they carry with them an intrinsic value to the consumer. This value is provided by demand, Influence, and identity.

 Identity

Sneakers came from humble beginnings, sneakers where originally and indicator of a working-class individual, the rubber dipped soles of shoes provided better longevity and traction for laborers (Duc Nhat Huy 6 and Chrisman-Campbell). This has evolved to the point where almost everyone has at least one pair of sneakers. Now there are more sneakers than even imaginable, giving the consumer to option to buy shoes that speak to their character. Rob Dyrdek, professional skate boarder and CO-Owner of DC Shoes was quoted in the documentary Sneakerheadz saying, “There are a handful of things that can define who you are without saying a word; shoes, are one of those things (Friendly and Partridge)”. This is where ideas of race, gender, sexual orientation, and personality descriptors come into play. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL explains in her Atlantic article, “Sneakers Have Always Been Political Shoes”, as verity grew shoes took on different meaning, for example Vans and other canvas shoes became the staple shoes of youth rebellion (Chrisman-Campbell). In Michael Jordan, Inc. They talk about the ides of race and how by just being the greatest athlete ever black lives were brought into white-household conversation. Thus, provided a backing for the Jordan shoes be a signifier of black excellence as well as promote racial equality (Andrews 47). Other operations to promote the Identity include gender and sexuality. It can be noted that there has been a shift away from the “shrink it and pink it” mentality that used to summarize women in the sneaker industry, to a more natural and comprehensive relationship with women’s sneaker design including using celebrity influence similar to how they’ve marketed to men for years (Miller 42-49). There is also a Nike’s line of Pride shoes that incorporate rainbows in poplar shoe design to show gay pride and support. There have also been interesting movements such as Adidas has a Parley collaboration, Parley be a recycled textiles distributor, who work with Adidas to create popular adidas shoes out of recycled materials. This helped people who identify as social activist to wear a shoe that promote their ideals. Identity is prevalent in all pieces of clothing but from the information collected it seems as though sneakers in particular has had a strong role in helping current, past, and future consumers show the world who they are.

 Influence

Much of sneaker culture as we understand it today can be attributed to how people of status make us feel about sneakers. According to a thesis written by Rodney M. Miller, we can attribute the growth of the industry to three key components: physical activity, professional sport, and hip hop culture (Miller VII). Beginning with hip hop culture, Garrett Kalel Grant researched the brand associations attributed to Yeezy brand. Yeezy is a company collaboration between Adidas and Kanye West. According to Grants’ study, “The aggregation stage provided the researcher with eleven associations directly connected to Yeezy brand based on mention: Kanye, expensive, Adidas, overrated, trendy, athleisure, sneaker, Kardashian, fashion, shoes, popular.” Kanye, trendy, Kardashian, and popular; the significance of these is that when solely asked to name things associated with the brand Yeezy (Grant 49-50), the most common and immediate responses contained two celebrities names and multiple forms terms referring to reputation. This is an example of how a sneaker can generate influence beyond its designs as well as the influential impact celebrities have on branding, particularly in the hip hop industry. Next is physical activity. Physical activity has become a mainstream thing, where as in the past it was something only for athletes. This said, the necessity for exercise has influenced an increased demand for sneakers in order to participate in the socially expected (working out). This has influenced athletics companies to create a different shoe for every niche or activity, from walking shoes to lifting shoes; cross-trainer to lifestyle (Archer 56). Lastly, and likely most prominent in the sneaker industry, are athletes. Athletes are placed on a podium, a class of super humans that others aspire to be. That said it has become the status quo that if you are a star athlete you have a signature sneaker. Often people first think of Jordan for his revered line of shoes, but the first athlete with a signature sneaker actually dates back to 1917 when the galosh company Converse created their first signature sneaker; the Chuck Taylor All-Star; named after basketball player Charlie Taylor. From then one we as consumers have been buying signature shoes because we want to “be like mike” or whatever athlete you so choose. There is also an interesting concept of how shoe marketing has influenced males in particular that are presented in the art thesis of Justin Cloud. He ideates that the primal/ carnal impulse and obsession that is instilled in men by marketing has permeated its way into modern art, particularly sighting the sneaker industry and to pieces of his portfolio that are takes on the shoe of the future (Cloud 12-14).

 Value

Shoe prices have increased dramatically since the birth of sneakers. Much faster than the rate of inflation. In 1957 Chuck Taylors cost $3.95 (Bengtson), 40 years after they were released. Directly adjusted for inflation they should cost $25.91 today; but on converse.com they cost $55. Also, for essentially the same shoe, but a street wear designer take on the classic silhouette, the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star Vulcanized Hi Off-White sells on StockX (a popular secondary shoe market) for roughly $1100. Shoes have taken on insane amounts of value because all the things they represent beyond just a devise to be worn on your foot. Often the value of sought-after sneaker will inflate to insane rates immediately following release do to a supply that is lower than the demand for the shoe. Alex Rakestraw says,

“a sneaker’s coolness is inversely related to how many people can potentially get their hands on it… if you’re the only one in your group with a specific shoe, the bragging rights are almost built-in. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but “1/100” is hard, fast, and objectively fresh” (Rakestraw).

He would later explain the conflict for valuable shoes by saying, “The thirst for inherent exclusivity creates an innately competitive culture where the goal is naturally adversarial” (Rakestraw). This has created new industry around shoes from reselling to cleaning like Mai Nhat Huy talks about in her bachelor thesis on Helsinki’s Sneaker Spa, the first provider of sport shoes and sneakers professional cleaning service. Often sneakers are treated like commodities, rather than shoes. This has created a movement of people who collect them like coins, as opposed to buying them to wearing them (Duc Nhat Huy 32). This has created a market similar to that of stock where any one particular shoe can increase of decrease in value at any given time based on external influence as well as demand.

       Works Cited

Andrews, David L. Michael Jordan, Inc.: Corporate Sport, Media Culture, and Late Modern America. State University of New York Press, 2001.

Michael Jordan Inc. Is a look into how media and capitalism influence sports culture. Being that Michael is highly regarded as being one of the greatest athletes to ever live, the author thought it best to use him as a focus for his book. The reading has themes of corruption and influenced both on behalf of athletes and consumers. Most often though, corporations making or incentivizing a certain behavior  to draw a rise from the consumer. “Nike has played a key role in promoting [certain] values and is thus is a major cultural force, a socializer and arbitrator of cultural and social values, as well as being a shoe company.” This quote directly ties into my research because we have to look into what sneaker culture is, and where it comes from. This implies that it may all be based on the influence of companies rather than the consumers who wear the shoes. This reading will also shed light on the influence of celebrities on the shoes we buy as well as how we value them.

Archer, Jean. “Anatomy of a Sneaker.” Network Journal, vol. 23, no. 2, 2016, p. 56.

Jean Archer, doctor of podiatrie medicine and foot surgery, is a podiatrist at Omnicare Multispecialty Center in Brooklyn, New York. He wrote this article to break down each individual component of a sneaker, and what that contributes to a shoe. He does so because as he puts it, “Most people lack the basic knowledge of what to look for in an athletic shoe.” Archer also talk about how many different sneakers there are for so many different activities. The reason I see this information to be important is a term like “sneaker” can be very ambiguous. For me to base a paper on it I think it best my audience and I be on the same page. Which is why I’d like to use this article from The Network journal, to help lay down some basic components that identify a sneaker, that way me and my reader can be on the same page.Cloud, Justin. “Ruin Runes.”

Bengtson, Russ. “50 Things You Didn't Know About Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars.” Complex, Complex, 20 Oct. 2016, www.complex.com/sneakers/2013/05/50-things-you-didnt-know-about-converse-chuck-taylor-all-stars/.

         Russ Bengtson is the former editor-and-chief of Slam magazine, also the ditor for complex sneakers. This article is trying to a paint a picture of the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star, keing in on interesting facts. This is pertinent to my research because the All-Star is the birth of the modern sneaker as we know it today. So to really understand sneakers you first have to understand Converse. To summarize what converse is Benington says, “ [Converse have] gone from the world's most prevalent basketball sneaker to a lifestyle staple. It remains beloved both for its history and its simplicity.” Converse have a staying power unlike any other shoe, dating back to their creation in 1917 they have been on constant production with no signs of stopping. Converse is doing something right, and without them it is possible that we wouldn’t have a sneaker culture at all.

Cloud, Justin. “Ruin Runes.” CUNY Academy Works, 21 May 2018, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/299/.

Justin Cloud has a Master of Fine Arts form Hunter College, where he wrote his thesis about the correlation between male ideals and how its leaked into his art. In this thesis he aims to draw a connection between male ego and fetishization of things like cares, SHOES, and survivalist mentality; to his modern sculpture movement that involves and invasion of industrial materials. Making lucid the ideas that are pounded into to the heads of men by modern marketing. The idea he presents is that these ideals have become such a staple that they are becoming a fluid part of who Justin Cloud is and therefore cannot be removed from anything he does, in this case: art. I seek to use this thesis, to help support some of the ideas about how shoes have become more than just something you need to wear. Cloud puts it well when he says, “Sneakers culture has completely ascended beyond that of practical footwear.” He goes on to talk about how sneakers are a practical solution for anyone, and marketers know that. So however you identify yourself, there is a shoe marketed towards you. Clouds adds on by saying how this marketing ideology has created a culture –specifically in men—that uses shoes to reinforce who they want to be.

Chrisman-Campbell, Kimberly. “The Long Political History of the Sneaker.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 28 Dec. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/sneakers-have-always-been-political-shoes/511628/.

Campbell tell the origin of sneakers as well as the political weight with which they carry. She is an author of an upcoming book entitled: Worn on This Day: The Clothes That Made History. In this article, as well as in her book, she focusses on the choices of consumers and industry to say certain things with their clothing. The article starts off with talking about how New Balances support of Trump created outrage with their consumers. It forces people to adopt their brands for the wrong reason (a Neo Nazi group claim that New Balance is the official shoe of white people). This led to bad press, as well as loss of previously held consumers. Even warranted a rebuttal from Nike, whom themselves had faced scandal for supporting specific celebrities. Campbell quotes Elizabeth Semmelhack in her article. Semmelhack is the Acclaimed shoe historian Elizabeth Semmelhack is senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto; also, the author of and curator of the book and exhibit Outside The Box. Semmelhack is quoted saying, “The cultural meaning behind sneakers is a constantly evolving dialogue between the people who produce the sneakers and the people who wear them.” Further contributing to the idea that sneakers have a voice, one that lends itself to self-expression or identity. The article contains themes of race, politics, and class; that push peoples interest in shoes beyond simple design.

Friendly, David T and Mick Partridge, directors. Sneakerheadz. Complex, 2015.

         This is a documentary produced by the famed pop culture outlet Complex, known for doing in-depth research and explanations on things important to the teens and young adults. The documentary uses almost exclusively interviews with some of the most famed contributors and creators of modern sneaker culture. They talk about things like, where did the culture come from, how has the culture changed, what did they do to contribute to the culture, their fondest memories involving shoes, their favorite shoes and more. Why? Well because as Rob Dyrdek puts it,” There are a handful of things that can define who you are without saying a word; shoes, are one of those things.” Similar to others this work talks on history, but the documentary takes a look into many different backgrounds, while talking about things like design, selling, reselling, and collecting.Giving both a well rounded and more global perspective on the sneaker industry.

Grant, Garrett Kalel, “A Case Study of Brand Associations for Yeezy Brand” (2018). LSU Master’s Theses. 4716.https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4716

This is a thesis based on the clothing brand Yeezy, Kanye’s brand underneath the Adidas franchise. The goal was to see how and what consumers associate with the brand Yeezy. They then took this information and saw how it would affect things like brand involvement and brand awareness. While this is a market research report I think it is interesting to understand how consumers preserve brand within the sneaker market. This could inform the obsessive nature of the sneaker consumers or even help us understand why we view shoe companies the way we do. Being also that Yeezy is a co-branded company between Kanye and Adidas, this thesis will talk about the influence of celebrity endorsements on the clothing market. The author says, “The aggregation stage provided the researcher with eleven associations directly connected to Yeezy brand based on mention: Kanye, expensive, Adidas, overrated, trendy, athleisure, sneaker, Kardashian, fashion, shoes, popular. Only the first seven associations could be directly connected to map based on their link strength.” This goes to show us that there are more to brands than just the name and what they sell, we draw external connections and that is what creates influence. I believe these influence could be the creates a culture in the sneaker industry if it is not the brands themselves as is implied in Michael Jordan, Inc.

 Miller, Rodney M. Jr, “If the Shoe Fits: A Historical Exploration of Gender Bias in the U.S. Sneaker Industry” (2019). Senior Projects Spring 2019. 80. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2019/80

Miller gives a history of how the sneaker industry began and has grown over the course of the last one hundred years or so. Citing three key components to growth in the industry; physical activity, professional sports, and Hip-Hop culture. Where Miller differs from other research is he focus on how the sneaker industry is polarizing particularly toward women. He explains how each of the three influences have brought with them their own set of biases towards women. Roughly summed up the author outs it this way: “n, women were discouraged from participating in physical activities because of misplaced fears that exercising was actually worse for women’s health. Additionally, competitive and professional sports show a historic bias against women because of beliefs that women were not anatomically structured to compete in sports. Lastly, Hip-Hop is a culture that has consistently placed constraints on women and ties their value based on their worth and their offerings to the men in their life.” This thesis could help to show who it is that comprise the sneaker culture. If it is found to be true that the culture really is a boy’s club it could warrant extra research as to why that is and the effect that has one women. This thesis also brings forth a interesting concept that is becoming fairly mainstream in modern culture. This being that boys are now the ones who collect and have ore shoes than they could wear, where in the past that had been ideal often associated with women. This thesis helps round out the history of how sneakers have gotten to where they are today.

Nhat Huy Mai. ”Helsinki’s Sneaker Spa Business Evaluation And Service Design.” Laurea University of Applied Sciences, October 2017, https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/154656/MaiDucNhatHuy_ThesisFinal.pdf?sequence=1

Duc Nhat Huy Mai is Degree Program in Restaurant Entrepreneurship, who wrote a bachelor thesis on Helsinki’s Sneaker Spa, the first provider of sport shoes and sneakers professional cleaning service, started by young entrepreneurs in 2017. While the goal of her these is to create a business plan for the Sneaker Spa, Mai does an amazing job of research to the growth of the sneaker industry and the how it is blossoming into new emerging markets such as shoe cleaning. My goal is to use her research to paint some of the back story of where sneakers come from; as well as, since her research is based in Finland, talk about the globalization of sneaker culture and some of the difference between areas. She says, “sneakers were invented in 18th century in US, when low class attached rubber to their sole to make the shoes more durable”. And I want know how we went from that to sneaker culture as we know it today.

Rakestraw, Alex. “Sneaker Culture Is a Reminder That We’re All Just Animals.” Highsnobiety, Highsnobiety, 5 Sept. 2017, www.highsnobiety.com/2017/09/04/sneaker-culture-competition-or-community/.

Rakestraw write this article to talk about how the search for rare shoes reverts the consumer to a primal state. This is one of the darker sides of the sneaker industry and sadly is often what outsider hear about sneaker culture. The want, or need in the mind a sneakerhead, can cause people to do some crazy things. We hear story of people being trampled robbed or even killed for their shoes. Rakestraw equates this to, “The thirst for inherent exclusivity creates an innately competitive culture where the goal is naturally adversarial: if your friend has a dope exclusive shoe, then your search for a more exclusive (and therefore more desirable) shoe is an ongoing challenge”. This poses interesting ideas as to whether the sneaker culture is a good thing or a bad thing. There are many sources that show he community and family oriented nature of the sneaker community, but what makes the main stream media of the outlandishly bad things the come from the sneaker community, as is the case with many news stories. This will help shape the image of what it looks like to be inside the sneaker culture. Painting the picture of what creates demand and how desire is influence by exclusivity.

[samosoapsoup]

How to Be an Artist, According to Josef Albers

ARTSY EDITORIAL BY SARAH GOTTESMANSEP 19TH, 2017 5:00 PM

Hazel Larsen Archer

Josef Albers, ca. 1948

Hammer Museum

Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, 1963. Francis Frost.

Before Josef Albers was an artist, he worked as an elementary school teacher for over a decade. In the 1920s, much to the dismay of his parents, he quit teaching to study art and design at the groundbreaking Bauhausschool in Weimar, Germany. After just three years of instruction, Albers joined the faculty there, becoming the first Bauhaus student to be promoted to a professorial role.

When the Bauhaus closed in 1933, Albers immigrated to the United States. Over the next 30 years, he thrived as both an artist and a teacher, honing his signature style of abstraction while leading classes at North Carolina’s legendary Black Mountain College and Connecticut’s YaleUniversity School of Art.

Albers always relied on his training as an elementary school teacher to guide his lesson plans. He rarely gave lectures—instead, he encouraged his students to learn through hands-on experimentation. This progressive teaching method proved effective. Many of his students—Eva Hesse, Ruth Asawa, Ray Johnson, Cy Twombly, Richard Anuszkiewicz, John Chamberlain, Richard Serra, and Robert Rauschenberg among them—would later become some of the most influential artists of the 21st century.

What follows is a selection of Albers’s greatest lessons, many of which continue to be used in classrooms today.

Lesson #1: Take three colors and turn them into four

Josef Albers

Never Before f, 1976

Susan Sheehan Gallery

Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, 1963. Francis Frost.

When Albers began his famous course on color, he asked his students to choose a red sheet of paper from a pack that included various different shades of the hue.

“Though there are innumerable colors—shades and tones—in daily vocabulary, there are only about 30 color names,” Albers explained in his book Interaction of Color (1963). For this reason, Albers found little use in talking about color, believing our lexicon was far too limited to capture its nuance.

Instead, he led his students through a series of trial-and-error experiments, so that they could teach themselves about the relativity of color: how a single color can take on a different quality or intensity depending on the colors that surround it.

For Albers, colored paper was the perfect tool for these exercises—it was cheap, flat, uniformly colored, and (as a bonus) mess-free. In one study, he asked his students to select three pieces of paper, all of different colors, and manipulate them in such a way that they appeared as four distinct hues. In another, he challenged them to do just the opposite—make four colors appear as three.

“In order to use color effectively, it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually,” Albers wrote of these assignments.

In 2013, the Yale University Press released an iPad version of Albers’s color studies in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Interaction of Color. The app features virtual colored paper, which users can digitally cut and paste to sensitize their eyes to the illusions of color.

Lesson #2: Draw your name backwards and upside-down

Josef Albers

Structural Constellation, 1954

Waddington Custot

To demonstrate the focus that drawing required, Albers led his students through a simple exercise. First, he asked them to write down their names on a sheet of paper and hold up their hands when they completed the task. The students scribbled their names and shot their hands up within seconds. Then, Albers challenged them to write their names backwards—and hands took longer to rise. Finally, he invited his students to write their names backwards and upside down.

To do this accurately, the students needed to focus, taking their time to envision the letter forms in their minds before writing anything down. This state of intense concentration, Albers told his students, is needed for every act of drawing.

At Yale, when Albers noticed that his students were lacking focus, he would make them walk across the street to Michael’s Art Store to buy $3 paper—then a costly purchase for students—to draw upon. Later, he would tell them to imagine that their cheap newsprint, a type of paper used for figurative drawing, was just as expensive, and ask them to draw on it with the same level of attention.

At the end of the semester, Albers collected his students’ sketchbooks to see if they had learned this lesson. “He threatened students with hell and damnation and a low grade at the least if they had doodles, phone numbers, cartoons, messages, or anything other than serious sketching in the book,” recalled his former student Rob Roy Kelly.

Albers wanted every page to be filled with careful drawings, and was known to even count the number of pages in his students’ sketchbooks to make sure that they didn’t cheat by ripping out any messy work.

Lesson #3: Use your hands to make newspaper sculptures

Josef Albers

Leaf Study IX, ca. 1940

Hammer Museum

Josef Albers

WLS I, 1966

Leslie Feely

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are poor, not rich,” Albers announced at the beginning of his Preliminary Course at the Bauhaus, recalled his former student Hannes Beckmann. Holding a pile of newspapers in his arms, Albers continued, “All art starts with a material….I want you to respect the material and use it in a way that makes sense—preserve its inherent characteristics.”

Then, Albers gave his students their first task: to transform the newspapers using only their fingertips. Tools like scissors and glue were strictly forbidden. With limited options, the students needed to get creative—and take direction from the material itself to discover new potentials.

Albers found that his students worked with a greater sense of freedom when presented with unfamiliar materials. So instead of clay and marble, he filled his classes with corrugated cardboard, paper streamers, razor blades, and chewing gum. He often challenged his students to find the breaking points of these items. What arrangement of wire mesh would allow it to hold the most weight? How can you fold tin so that it presents the greatest shine?

The goal of these exercises was never to create artworks—in fact, Albers discouraged that. He wanted his students to learn how to approach materials without distraction. “At the moment, we prefer cleverness to beauty,” he would say.

Lesson #4: Draw the spaces between chair legs

Josef Albers

Umgeben / Surrounded, 1933

Brooke Alexander, Inc.

Though he demanded focus, Albers also wanted his students to be absorbed by mundane visual phenomena, whether that be the flash of light when a television turns off, or the movement of color when a tea bag enters hot water. According to Albers, artists needed to have open eyes, sensitive to the lines, forms, and hues that are often overlooked.

Drawing the shapes (or “negative spaces”) between objects—whether that be chair legs, milk bottles, or plant leaves—would help students develop this sense of heightened perception. If students focused more on these in-between forms, they would learn to make stronger compositions, and might even become better people.

For Albers, art lessons always doubled as life lessons, and he believed that students who cultivated “visual empathy” would also develop social empathy. “Respect the other material, or color—or your neighbor. Respect the one you weren’t paying attention to,” he told his classes.

In so doing, Albers wanted to rid art and society from hierarchy. “We no longer draw distinctions between ‘carrying’ and ‘being carried’; we no longer admit divisions between ‘serving’ and ‘being served,’ between ‘decoration’ and ‘that which is decorated,’” he taught his students. “Every element must simultaneously help and be helped by the whole, support and be supported.”

Embodying these lessons, as you might imagine, takes time. Fifteen years after he graduated from Albers’s classroom, Rauschenberg admitted, “I’m still learning what he taught me.”

—Sarah Gottesman

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artist-josef-albers

[tristanvswriting-blog]

Lit Review Draft #2

Lit Review

Introduction

From my research as to what is sneaker culture? I’ve come to find that sneaker are far more than shoes, so much is said and thought about sneakers that they carry with them an intrinsic value to the consumer. This value is provided by demand, Influence, and identity.

 Identity

Sneakers came from humble beginnings, sneakers where originally and indicator of a working-class individual, the rubber dipped soles of shoes provided better longevity and traction for laborers (Duc Nhat Huy 6 and Chrisman-Campbell). This has evolved to the point where almost everyone has at least one pair of sneakers. Now there are more sneakers than even imaginable, giving the consumer to option to buy shoes that speak to their character. Rob Dyrdek, professional skate boarder and CO-Owner of DC Shoes was quoted in the documentary Sneakerheadz saying, “There are a handful of things that can define who you are without saying a word; shoes, are one of those things (Friendly and Partridge)”. This is where ideas of race, gender, sexual orientation, and personality descriptors come into play. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL explains in her Atlantic article, “Sneakers Have Always Been Political Shoes”, as verity grew shoes took on different meaning, for example Vans and other canvas shoes became the staple shoes of youth rebellion (Chrisman-Campbell). In Michael Jordan, Inc. They talk about the ides of race and how by just being the greatest athlete ever black lives were brought into white-household conversation. Thus, provided a backing for the Jordan shoes be a signifier of black excellence as well as promote racial equality (Andrews 47). Other operations to promote the Identity include gender and sexuality. It can be noted that there has been a shift away from the “shrink it and pink it” mentality that used to summarize women in the sneaker industry, to a more natural and comprehensive relationship with women’s sneaker design including using celebrity influence similar to how they’ve marketed to men for years (Miller 42-49). There is also a Nike’s line of Pride shoes that incorporate rainbows in poplar shoe design to show gay pride and support. There have also been interesting movements such as Adidas has a Parley collaboration, Parley be a recycled textiles distributor, who work with Adidas to create popular adidas shoes out of recycled materials. This helped people who identify as social activist to wear a shoe that promote their ideals. Identity is prevalent in all pieces of clothing but from the information collected it seems as though sneakers in particular has had a strong role in helping current, past, and future consumers show the world who they are.

 Influence

Much of sneaker culture as we understand it today can be attributed to how people of status make us feel about sneakers. According to a thesis written by Rodney M. Miller, we can attribute the growth of the industry to three key components: physical activity, professional sport, and hip hop culture (Miller VII). Beginning with hip hop culture, Garrett Kalel Grant researched the brand associations attributed to Yeezy brand. Yeezy is a company collaboration between Adidas and Kanye West. According to Grants’ study, “The aggregation stage provided the researcher with eleven associations directly connected to Yeezy brand based on mention: Kanye, expensive, Adidas, overrated, trendy, athleisure, sneaker, Kardashian, fashion, shoes, popular.” Kanye, trendy, Kardashian, and popular; the significance of these is that when solely asked to name things associated with the brand Yeezy (Grant 49-50), the most common and immediate responses contained two celebrities names and multiple forms terms referring to reputation. This is an example of how a sneaker can generate influence beyond its designs as well as the influential impact celebrities have on branding, particularly in the hip hop industry. Next is physical activity. Physical activity has become a mainstream thing, where as in the past it was something only for athletes. This said, the necessity for exercise has influenced an increased demand for sneakers in order to participate in the socially expected (working out). This has influenced athletics companies to create a different shoe for every niche or activity, from walking shoes to lifting shoes; cross-trainer to lifestyle (Archer 56). Lastly, and likely most prominent in the sneaker industry, are athletes. Athletes are placed on a podium, a class of super humans that others aspire to be. That said it has become the status quo that if you are a star athlete you have a signature sneaker. Often people first think of Jordan for his revered line of shoes, but the first athlete with a signature sneaker actually dates back to 1917 when the galosh company Converse created their first signature sneaker; the Chuck Taylor All-Star; named after basketball player Charlie Taylor. From then one we as consumers have been buying signature shoes because we want to “be like mike” or whatever athlete you so choose. There is also an interesting concept of how shoe marketing has influenced males in particular that are presented in the art thesis of Justin Cloud. He ideates that the primal/ carnal impulse and obsession that is instilled in men by marketing has permeated its way into modern art, particularly sighting the sneaker industry and to pieces of his portfolio that are takes on the shoe of the future (Cloud 12-14).

 Value

Shoe prices have increased dramatically since the birth of sneakers. Much faster than the rate of inflation. In 1957 Chuck Taylors cost $3.95 (Bengtson), 40 years after they were released. Directly adjusted for inflation they should cost $25.91 today; but on converse.com they cost $55. Also, for essentially the same shoe, but a street wear designer take on the classic silhouette, the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star Vulcanized Hi Off-White sells on StockX (a popular secondary shoe market) for roughly $1100. Shoes have taken on insane amounts of value because all the things they represent beyond just a devise to be worn on your foot. Often the value of sought-after sneaker will inflate to insane rates immediately following release do to a supply that is lower than the demand for the shoe. Alex Rakestraw says,

“a sneaker’s coolness is inversely related to how many people can potentially get their hands on it… if you’re the only one in your group with a specific shoe, the bragging rights are almost built-in. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but “1/100” is hard, fast, and objectively fresh” (Rakestraw).

He would later explain the conflict for valuable shoes by saying, “The thirst for inherent exclusivity creates an innately competitive culture where the goal is naturally adversarial” (Rakestraw). This has created new industry around shoes from reselling to cleaning like Mai Nhat Huy talks about in her bachelor thesis on Helsinki’s Sneaker Spa, the first provider of sport shoes and sneakers professional cleaning service. Often sneakers are treated like commodities, rather than shoes. This has created a movement of people who collect them like coins, as opposed to buying them to wearing them (Duc Nhat Huy 32). This has created a market similar to that of stock where any one particular shoe can increase of decrease in value at any given time based on external influence as well as demand.

       Works Cited

Andrews, David L. Michael Jordan, Inc.: Corporate Sport, Media Culture, and Late Modern America. State University of New York Press, 2001.

Michael Jordan Inc. Is a look into how media and capitalism influence sports culture. Being that Michael is highly regarded as being one of the greatest athletes to ever live, the author thought it best to use him as a focus for his book. The reading has themes of corruption and influenced both on behalf of athletes and consumers. Most often though, corporations making or incentivizing a certain behavior  to draw a rise from the consumer. “Nike has played a key role in promoting [certain] values and is thus is a major cultural force, a socializer and arbitrator of cultural and social values, as well as being a shoe company.” This quote directly ties into my research because we have to look into what sneaker culture is, and where it comes from. This implies that it may all be based on the influence of companies rather than the consumers who wear the shoes. This reading will also shed light on the influence of celebrities on the shoes we buy as well as how we value them.

Archer, Jean. “Anatomy of a Sneaker.” Network Journal, vol. 23, no. 2, 2016, p. 56.

Jean Archer, doctor of podiatrie medicine and foot surgery, is a podiatrist at Omnicare Multispecialty Center in Brooklyn, New York. He wrote this article to break down each individual component of a sneaker, and what that contributes to a shoe. He does so because as he puts it, “Most people lack the basic knowledge of what to look for in an athletic shoe.” Archer also talk about how many different sneakers there are for so many different activities. The reason I see this information to be important is a term like “sneaker” can be very ambiguous. For me to base a paper on it I think it best my audience and I be on the same page. Which is why I’d like to use this article from The Network journal, to help lay down some basic components that identify a sneaker, that way me and my reader can be on the same page.Cloud, Justin. “Ruin Runes.”

Bengtson, Russ. “50 Things You Didn't Know About Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars.” Complex, Complex, 20 Oct. 2016, www.complex.com/sneakers/2013/05/50-things-you-didnt-know-about-converse-chuck-taylor-all-stars/.

         Russ Bengtson is the former editor-and-chief of Slam magazine, also the ditor for complex sneakers. This article is trying to a paint a picture of the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star, keing in on interesting facts. This is pertinent to my research because the All-Star is the birth of the modern sneaker as we know it today. So to really understand sneakers you first have to understand Converse. To summarize what converse is Benington says, “ [Converse have] gone from the world's most prevalent basketball sneaker to a lifestyle staple. It remains beloved both for its history and its simplicity.” Converse have a staying power unlike any other shoe, dating back to their creation in 1917 they have been on constant production with no signs of stopping. Converse is doing something right, and without them it is possible that we wouldn’t have a sneaker culture at all.

Cloud, Justin. “Ruin Runes.” CUNY Academy Works, 21 May 2018, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/299/.

Justin Cloud has a Master of Fine Arts form Hunter College, where he wrote his thesis about the correlation between male ideals and how its leaked into his art. In this thesis he aims to draw a connection between male ego and fetishization of things like cares, SHOES, and survivalist mentality; to his modern sculpture movement that involves and invasion of industrial materials. Making lucid the ideas that are pounded into to the heads of men by modern marketing. The idea he presents is that these ideals have become such a staple that they are becoming a fluid part of who Justin Cloud is and therefore cannot be removed from anything he does, in this case: art. I seek to use this thesis, to help support some of the ideas about how shoes have become more than just something you need to wear. Cloud puts it well when he says, “Sneakers culture has completely ascended beyond that of practical footwear.” He goes on to talk about how sneakers are a practical solution for anyone, and marketers know that. So however you identify yourself, there is a shoe marketed towards you. Clouds adds on by saying how this marketing ideology has created a culture –specifically in men—that uses shoes to reinforce who they want to be.

Chrisman-Campbell, Kimberly. “The Long Political History of the Sneaker.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 28 Dec. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/sneakers-have-always-been-political-shoes/511628/.

Campbell tell the origin of sneakers as well as the political weight with which they carry. She is an author of an upcoming book entitled: Worn on This Day: The Clothes That Made History. In this article, as well as in her book, she focusses on the choices of consumers and industry to say certain things with their clothing. The article starts off with talking about how New Balances support of Trump created outrage with their consumers. It forces people to adopt their brands for the wrong reason (a Neo Nazi group claim that New Balance is the official shoe of white people). This led to bad press, as well as loss of previously held consumers. Even warranted a rebuttal from Nike, whom themselves had faced scandal for supporting specific celebrities. Campbell quotes Elizabeth Semmelhack in her article. Semmelhack is the Acclaimed shoe historian Elizabeth Semmelhack is senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto; also, the author of and curator of the book and exhibit Outside The Box. Semmelhack is quoted saying, “The cultural meaning behind sneakers is a constantly evolving dialogue between the people who produce the sneakers and the people who wear them.” Further contributing to the idea that sneakers have a voice, one that lends itself to self-expression or identity. The article contains themes of race, politics, and class; that push peoples interest in shoes beyond simple design.

Friendly, David T and Mick Partridge, directors. Sneakerheadz. Complex, 2015.

         This is a documentary produced by the famed pop culture outlet Complex, known for doing in-depth research and explanations on things important to the teens and young adults. The documentary uses almost exclusively interviews with some of the most famed contributors and creators of modern sneaker culture. They talk about things like, where did the culture come from, how has the culture changed, what did they do to contribute to the culture, their fondest memories involving shoes, their favorite shoes and more. Why? Well because as Rob Dyrdek puts it,” There are a handful of things that can define who you are without saying a word; shoes, are one of those things.” Similar to others this work talks on history, but the documentary takes a look into many different backgrounds, while talking about things like design, selling, reselling, and collecting.Giving both a well rounded and more global perspective on the sneaker industry.

Grant, Garrett Kalel, “A Case Study of Brand Associations for Yeezy Brand” (2018). LSU Master’s Theses. 4716.https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4716

This is a thesis based on the clothing brand Yeezy, Kanye’s brand underneath the Adidas franchise. The goal was to see how and what consumers associate with the brand Yeezy. They then took this information and saw how it would affect things like brand involvement and brand awareness. While this is a market research report I think it is interesting to understand how consumers preserve brand within the sneaker market. This could inform the obsessive nature of the sneaker consumers or even help us understand why we view shoe companies the way we do. Being also that Yeezy is a co-branded company between Kanye and Adidas, this thesis will talk about the influence of celebrity endorsements on the clothing market. The author says, “The aggregation stage provided the researcher with eleven associations directly connected to Yeezy brand based on mention: Kanye, expensive, Adidas, overrated, trendy, athleisure, sneaker, Kardashian, fashion, shoes, popular. Only the first seven associations could be directly connected to map based on their link strength.” This goes to show us that there are more to brands than just the name and what they sell, we draw external connections and that is what creates influence. I believe these influence could be the creates a culture in the sneaker industry if it is not the brands themselves as is implied in Michael Jordan, Inc.

 Miller, Rodney M. Jr, “If the Shoe Fits: A Historical Exploration of Gender Bias in the U.S. Sneaker Industry” (2019). Senior Projects Spring 2019. 80. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2019/80

Miller gives a history of how the sneaker industry began and has grown over the course of the last one hundred years or so. Citing three key components to growth in the industry; physical activity, professional sports, and Hip-Hop culture. Where Miller differs from other research is he focus on how the sneaker industry is polarizing particularly toward women. He explains how each of the three influences have brought with them their own set of biases towards women. Roughly summed up the author outs it this way: “n, women were discouraged from participating in physical activities because of misplaced fears that exercising was actually worse for women’s health. Additionally, competitive and professional sports show a historic bias against women because of beliefs that women were not anatomically structured to compete in sports. Lastly, Hip-Hop is a culture that has consistently placed constraints on women and ties their value based on their worth and their offerings to the men in their life.” This thesis could help to show who it is that comprise the sneaker culture. If it is found to be true that the culture really is a boy’s club it could warrant extra research as to why that is and the effect that has one women. This thesis also brings forth a interesting concept that is becoming fairly mainstream in modern culture. This being that boys are now the ones who collect and have ore shoes than they could wear, where in the past that had been ideal often associated with women. This thesis helps round out the history of how sneakers have gotten to where they are today.

Nhat Huy Mai. ”Helsinki’s Sneaker Spa Business Evaluation And Service Design.” Laurea University of Applied Sciences, October 2017, https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/154656/MaiDucNhatHuy_ThesisFinal.pdf?sequence=1

Duc Nhat Huy Mai is Degree Program in Restaurant Entrepreneurship, who wrote a bachelor thesis on Helsinki’s Sneaker Spa, the first provider of sport shoes and sneakers professional cleaning service, started by young entrepreneurs in 2017. While the goal of her these is to create a business plan for the Sneaker Spa, Mai does an amazing job of research to the growth of the sneaker industry and the how it is blossoming into new emerging markets such as shoe cleaning. My goal is to use her research to paint some of the back story of where sneakers come from; as well as, since her research is based in Finland, talk about the globalization of sneaker culture and some of the difference between areas. She says, “sneakers were invented in 18th century in US, when low class attached rubber to their sole to make the shoes more durable”. And I want know how we went from that to sneaker culture as we know it today.

Rakestraw, Alex. “Sneaker Culture Is a Reminder That We’re All Just Animals.” Highsnobiety, Highsnobiety, 5 Sept. 2017, www.highsnobiety.com/2017/09/04/sneaker-culture-competition-or-community/.

Rakestraw write this article to talk about how the search for rare shoes reverts the consumer to a primal state. This is one of the darker sides of the sneaker industry and sadly is often what outsider hear about sneaker culture. The want, or need in the mind a sneakerhead, can cause people to do some crazy things. We hear story of people being trampled robbed or even killed for their shoes. Rakestraw equates this to, “The thirst for inherent exclusivity creates an innately competitive culture where the goal is naturally adversarial: if your friend has a dope exclusive shoe, then your search for a more exclusive (and therefore more desirable) shoe is an ongoing challenge”. This poses interesting ideas as to whether the sneaker culture is a good thing or a bad thing. There are many sources that show he community and family oriented nature of the sneaker community, but what makes the main stream media of the outlandishly bad things the come from the sneaker community, as is the case with many news stories. This will help shape the image of what it looks like to be inside the sneaker culture. Painting the picture of what creates demand and how desire is influence by exclusivity.