#On the other CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE CULTURAL RELEVANCE. THE SOCIAL IMPACT. THE LITERATURE RESET. How can you ignore all of that!!!!!

[kyouka-supremacy]

Perhaps having just found out that “You damn fool // hurry up and go” isn't part of the official English translation of the bsd manga and the sudden urge to commit arson that awoke in me are completely unrelated who am I to say

[slaviclore]

Chopin biographies from 2010+

keeping track of my chopinology resources, and I figured someone might find it useful -- this is not an exhaustive list of available literature, just stuff I've personally read, and I will be adding to it over time.

Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions (2020)

by Annik LaFarge

English language, audiobook available

Summary: This is a partial biography of Chopin from the perspective of his composition of the funeral march. This book is written in a super engaging, conversational style, and it comes with a fun multimedia web site with music and videos for context.

Major pro: What sets this book apart from the other biographies in the field is LaFarge's exceptional empathy for her subjects. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is for a field that has been at times unnecessarily cruel to some of the humans in the story. That's partly why this book is my top recommendation for anyone wanting to understand Chopin's contentious relationship with his famous life partner of 9-ish years, George Sand (a woman using a man's name).

Major con: Using the composition of Chopin's arguably most famous work as the blueprint of his life story works well organizationally, but it doesn't actually add much to our understanding of the funeral march itself, beyond its personal impact on the author or, perhaps more broadly, the modern music lover.

Best for: anyone just wanting to read something engaging about music and history. If you don't know anything about Chopin, the history of Poland, or the funeral march, this is perfect.

Chopin. Miłość i pasja (2020)

by Iwona Kienzler

Polish language, no translation available as far as I know, audiobook (in Polish) available

Summary: This is a full biography with emphasis on the various romances that have been linked to Chopin over the last 200 years or so, real or not, even the ones we're not talking about anymore.

Major pro: There has been so much flowery language dedicated to the many and varied romances that Chopin did -- or maybe did or definitely didn't but we still talked about it a lot -- engage in, this book is refreshing for its sober tone and healthy skepticism on the subject. The author tells us what we know, what we don't know, and gives a historical perspective of the shifting notions the field has entertained over time.

Major con: The biography is fairly standard and doesn't expand the field much.

Best for: the casual reader of history, or the serious reader of the history of shipping.

Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (2018)

by Alan Walker

English language, audiobook available

Summary: This is a full biography meant to encompass not only the entire course of Chopin's life but also the relevant social, political and cultural environment, the fates of people important to the story, and the musical context.

Major pro: Walker's effort to recreate the rich historical and social background of Chopin's life is unique in the field for its scope and detail, i.e., he gives a lot of information where most biographers stick only to summaries of critical events. This fact, as well as Walker's efforts to introduce or emphasize unknown or marginalized resources and documents, make his book an important blueprint for anyone studying Chopin, or even the early 19th century overall.

Major con: Walker's interpretations of Chopin's correspondence are dated and dense, which is a problem because the correspondence is the most important primary source we have (the musical compositions cannot be directly analyzed for concrete meaning). Most of Walker's takes on the content of the letters can be traced to interpretations made by previous biographers (whether or not he cites these is a toss-up), so it's not like anyone has ever done better per se -- however, the field now has the resources to do this work more perceptively. Walker had the opportunity (and I believe the responsibility) to step up to do that, but because he didn't, his biography was outdated the day it came off the press.

Best for: the reader already somewhat familiar with Chopin's biography, who is interested in developing a more complete image of the story, but who is also able to make critical judgments on the historical analysis, or at least recognize where such were made by the author. Also good for historians.

Chopin's Piano: In Search of the Instrument that Transformed Music (2018)

by Paul Kildea

English language, audiobook available

Summary: This is a partial biography of Chopin from the perspective of his composition of the Preludes and one of the pianos on which he composed them. The history picks up long after his death with a partial biography of Wanda Landowska, the famous pianist who eventually came to own the piano, through WWII.

Major pro: This approach is unique in Chopin biography for addressing his impact on the difficult history of the 20th century, with Nazis stealing the piano and Landowska's efforts to get it back. This creates depth of perspective where Chopin biography usually ends shortly after his death. It's a different type of story than the field is used to.

Major con: Because the scope is so broad, this book gives less of Chopin's own story overall, and sometimes the thread feels disjointed.

Best for: casual readers looking for an interesting, well-written story, or a historian interested in WWII-time chopinology.

Chopin: Prince of the Romantics (2010)

by Adam Zamoyski

English language, no audiobook

Summary: This is an updated edition of Zamoyski's 1979 Chopin biography (which I did not read, so I can't compare). This is my personal recommendation for a casual reader looking for a full biography, Chopin birth to Chopin death, and a good read.

Major pro: engagingly written, hits all the important points, and contains ample citations to direct the reader to major resources in the field.

Major con: contains some mythology that historians wouldn't take seriously today.

Best for: the casual reader, no previous Chopin knowledge required.

[kusnorio]

Involving the spirit of creativity: Denny Ja revives the works of Andy Warhol through AI's touch

When talking about art, works from Andy Warhol become a very relevant example to be discussed. The artist born in the United States is very famous for his work which is often related to pop culture. Some famous works from Warhol include Blue Watermellon, Campbell's Soup Cans, and Marilyn Monroe. Warhol art does appear unique with its pop art style that combines popular elements such as advertisements, magazines, and movie stars. However, what if the famous works Andy Warhol is done with the help of the latest technology such as artificial intelligence? Denny JA, a famous Indonesian artist and businessman, decided to try to answer that question by reviving Warhol's works through AI's touch. Denny's hard work with a team consisting of AI experts finally appeared extraordinary and was enough to prove the sophistication of AI technology today. Although done with the help of the latest technology, these works still maintain the characteristics of colorful warhol art and are the result of modifications to popular stars. This senior Indonesian artist does have its expertise in turning the work of Warhol to be more unique and interesting using AI technology. Denny JA is known as an artist and businessman who is creative, innovative, and enthusiastic. His passion for art and technology allows him to succeed in creating worldwide works. It was the merger of art and technology that inspired him until finally Denny and his team conducted an experiment for the works of Andy Warhol art. Not limited to that, Denny JA has also tried to innovate in the world of literacy, especially through the publication of books by "Mizan" and "Gramedia". He introduced the concept of a book from the collaboration of Indonesian artists and writers entitled "Art and Literature". The book consists of 30 art pages painted by famous Indonesian artists and 30 pages of literature written by famous Indonesian writers. Denny Ja, also known as a social activist figure, is also active in social activities through the Human Rights and Democracy Study Center NGOs. He was elected as the team leader to run a social program aimed at combating corruption and building a culture of integrity. Denny Ja's success in creating innovation and continues to arouse the spirit of creativity in Indonesia has a positive impact and shows its important role in the world of art and technology. In addition, the social activities he carried out showed that he not only cared about his work in an art space, but also in a broader social life. From these experiences it can be seen that life with full awareness in creativity can bring positive changes in yourself and the surrounding environment. The spirit of creativity is what brings Denny Ja to revive Andy Warhol's works and create various other innovations. This will certainly bring inspiration and enthusiasm for you to continue to do new things that are creative in your life. Denny Ja's book, "art and literature", can also be proof that art and literature can work together in creating different and more creative works. Interrelated arts and literature can be a liaison to tell a story or can even be a work that complements each other. The book is the beginning of a new understanding to get new insight and knowledge. With the spirit of creativity, we can produce more meaningful works, represent a form of freedom of expression in our creativity, and help overcome social problems. Denny Ja has proven how the sophistication of AI technology can help maintain and provide a touch of creativity to Andy Warhol's works. He teaches us that with the spirit of creativity we can create something more meaningful and make positive changes in society.

Check more: inspire the spirit of creativity: Denny JA revives the works of Andy Warhol through AI's touch

[rainbowsky]

Anonymous asked:

Why is China so against homosexuality? [redacted] Upset gay turtle here venting.

Sorry, Anon, a lot of that rant came across as Sinophobic so I've removed it. I really urge us all to be careful about how we talk about these issues, and consider how our words might land on others. There's an incredible amount of racism and hate levelled at Chinese people these days, I believe it's our responsibility to do our best to lighten that load. Our pain doesn't justify giving others pain.

As for the issue of China and homosexuality, you're painting with a pretty broad - and apparently uninformed - brush, here.

I don't know nearly as much about this topic as I want to know (any book recommendations anyone has on queer history in China and/or translations of relevant Chinese poetry and literature would be greatly appreciated), but even in my somewhat limited understanding I know that the crackdown on queerness in China is quite recent. China has actually had a much more complex, much more nuanced, much more rich and interesting history with homosexuality and effemininity than most Western queer people would credit.

Also, the attitude of contemporary Chinese people toward homosexuality is by no means homogeneous, and queer acceptance and support for queer people is growing in China just as it’s growing everywhere else. Even those who are opposed to homosexuality aren’t necessarily opposed to it out of bigotry in the way Western queers might assume. There are cultural differences that impact all of this, so it’s important to approach issues like this with a spirit of inquiry rather than one of outrage.

Rather than try to dig into topics I’m less than qualified to educate people on, I’m going to point you to some content that might give you a broader picture of these issues.

There have been some excellent metas from Pie. I recommend reading those because they are incredibly interesting and well thought out, and present a massive amount of information on subjects related to this. (Please heed all TW and CW; some of this is not for the faint of heart).

What BL stories onscreen might mean for the queer community

Entertainment industry crackdowns and the future of dangai

The feminization of men

How China’s population policies impact the queer community

DD’s sneakers and ice cream post

This entire exchange in answer to some of my questions about the situation for queer people in China

There was also an interesting response from @exitchasedbyawookiee to a related topic that you might find interesting.

@peekbackstage made a post about masculinity in China that you might also find interesting.

One of my past posts you might find interesting:

Drag, Gender Identity and Queer Culture

There is a lot more to these topics than we are aware of in the West. They’re enormously complex, and influenced by a broad range of political, social, cultural and historical issues. As someone who has been trying to get my head around it all for a couple of years now, I can definitely say that it takes dedicated study to get any proper understanding of queer issues in China.

I urge all fans to please be extremely careful and respectful about how we talk about these issues. As I said, there is so much racism and hate against Chinese people right now and they don’t need more hurled at them, even out of carelessness. We must all take responsibility for our own attitudes and how our behavior might impact others. And it behooves us to remember that in the West we’re massively inundated with anti-China rhetoric on a daily basis.

I’ve said this many times in the past, no regime is representative of a country, no matter how much that regime wants it to be true. And it would be intellectually lazy and foolish to try to characterize billions of people with a few simple buzzwords.

I agree that it’s frustrating to see human rights trampled on, and as a queer person it can be very triggering to read some of the homophobic BS coming out of the regime these days. I understand the temptation to compare China with other Asian countries where things are more progressive, but it doesn’t serve any useful or practical purpose and only leads to more negativity.

Ultimately we all want to be good allies for queer people across the globe, and it can be difficult seeing people we love having to go without the rights, freedoms and support we want for them. I encourage everyone to guide that love and concern into positive channels. Support for GGDD and their projects and endorsements. Support for LGBTQ organizations, particularly ones dealing with queer refugees. Support for your local LGBTQ orgs as well.

In the immortal words of Johnny Rotten, “Anger is an energy.” At such a depressing, emotionally deflating time in history, anger can be exceptionally useful motivator.

Over-arching all of that, a spirit of inquiry and cultural exchange with queer people in regions we aren’t familiar with is probably the best approach to dealing with our concerns about human rights in those regions. As the old saying goes, “Nothing about us without us.” If we want to be supportive, we should let others take the lead in giving us guidance on what they need.

I know that is a lot easier said than done when it comes to China, given how walled off things can feel, but with patience and persistence it is possible. And while we’re going through that long process, I don’t think any queer person in China would begrudge us looking to our own backyards as well.

More on this topic, including educational resources, can be found here.

[earthstellar]

MTMTE HALLOWEEN 2020 FIC: Costume Party

SUMMARY: 

Rodimus sets up an Earth style Halloween costume party at Swerve’s to help boost the crew’s morale. Things get a little... weird, when they start to behave like the creatures their costumes represent. 

PAIRINGS: 

Rodimus/Megatron and Drift/Ratchet 

WARNINGS: 

It’s spooky, there is some talk regarding Drift’s traumas, and there is bloodshed/violence in a very creepy way. Please be careful and do not read if you are potentially upset by suggestive violence, blood, etc. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: 

I was unable to finish or edit this on time for Halloween; I’ll post the final version to AO3 when it’s ready, but for now, here’s what I have! Enjoy the preview! 

Rodimus was happy to let Swerve host a Human Halloween event in the bar. 

Swerve had wanted to do it for a while, but evidently had to wait for the right Earth season despite the Lost Light being absolutely nowhere near Earth. Rodimus agreed that they could use something fun and distracting to lift the spirits of the crew after a somewhat bad supply pickup had gone south and resulted in a thankfully brief dry spell as they'd had to go without their usual ship wide energon supply, resulting in the bar being shuttered for the duration until they were able to stop at Hedra Nine for a full restocking. 

Ultra Magnus had been the only one pleased at the brief closure of Swerve's bar, as it certainly cut down on his workload, but it was unfortunately Ultra Magnus that had to be convinced of the idea. Hence the emergency command meeting currently underway.

"So explain to me again the purpose of this holiday." Delivered in a flat tone, Ultra Magnus never failed to intimidate. 

As usual, Ultra Magnus loomed over the relatively small table positioned in the centre of the room, where Rodimus, Drift, and Megatron sat with some research in hand on various data pads, as well as some footage from Rewind and Swerve's collection of human media. 

Rodimus, undaunted, continued his pitch. 

"It originally started as a folk religious practice around appeasing the spirits of the dead and keeping ghosts, the spirits of deceased humans, from haunting homes and towns. Essentially. But in modern Earth context, it's all about having fun, dressing up as scary or silly characters and getting to relax a bit during a time of year that Earth people relate with darkness, bad weather, that kind of thing. It makes people happy during what were traditionally difficult times. I think we could use something interesting and fun to get the crew back into better spirits after that mess we had to deal with in the Astreus System. See? Fun can have a logical purpose: To improve crew morale. It’s… fun, Mags. People tend to enjoy it. I think it'll be fine." 

Rodimus leaned back in his chair and grinned, sure that he had made a strong case. Megatron was absorbed in a data pad featuring a collection of human myths and tales about the holiday, centred around the origins of the modern practice as it was the most relevant information, although he was interested in the older history of the celebration and where such practices may have come from. 

Megatron was surprised by the depth and complexity of the human holiday. He was still getting over some of his lingering prejudice towards organics; Reading up on their cultures and history was one way to root out what was left of his more harmful mindset. The best cure for ignorance was often simple research, after all… Orion Pax would be proud. He nearly laughed at the thought. 

But he found himself looking forward to Swerve’s little seasonal party, even if there were no seasons per se to celebrate out in open space. Rodimus had made a good point; The crew could certainly use the distraction, and Rung had advised him to try new things that had no associations with any past memories or experiences as part of something they were trying in therapy. He wasn’t exactly excited for it, but it could tolerate it. Especially with Rodimus also in attendance; Undoubtedly most of the attention would be drawn away from him, at least. 

Ultra Magnus was completely still, a telltale sign that he was considering something, running through his extensive memory storage of ship protocols and broader applicable legislation in the hopes of finding something that could possibly mitigate any poor outcomes— Rodimus had won, it would certainly help crew morale and such intentions were covered by rules regarding health and safety of passengers and crew members. Fair play.

--

The bulletin from Swerve, once approved, had been sent out to everyone on board. The event was fairly simple, a marathon of various Halloween themed human movies, followed by a costume party at the bar. Teams of three were allowed to submit group costumes for judgement by a panel led by Ultra Magnus, partially because it was the only way to get him to participate and partially because it was the only way to have a judged competition without anyone complaining of unfairness. 

The mood had immediately improved, with the Lost Light buzzing about costume design ideas and speculating on who was joining whose team and what the chances of winning might be. 

Rodimus beamed, happy for all the chatter and gossip. His crew was happy, so he was happy. And Megatron was invested as well, glad to go along with it, enjoying the literature about it. He couldn't be more excited for the event; He trusted Swerve to make it as extravagant as possible, despite the limitations of their supplies on board and what little in the way of textile fabrics they could find and pick up from smaller stop-overs at various stations operated by organics along the way prior to the day.

Rodimus had been concerned about the cost, but Drift was enamoured with the spiritual background of the holiday, and seemed all too willing to provide the spare shanix for anything they could find for the crew. 

So far, it had been going incredibly well. Rodimus was excited himself, as he couldn't wait to see everyone's final costumes, but the idea of Megatron getting a break to genuinely enjoy something with him brought warmth to his spark, making it spin even faster in its casing. 

--

 "Okay, everybody! We had a lot of interest in the costume aspect of this whole thing, but it seems only three teams actually came together to participate in the judged competition. However, most of you have turned up in costume anyway, so it all works out! The judging will go faster and you can all guzzle down some of the special drinks on the menu for tonight only. Welcome to Swerve's, and Happy Human Halloween!" 

Leave it to Swerve to kick off the night in style; The doors were thrown open and bots rushed in, claiming booths and seats at the bar, some mild squabbling already starting but quickly dialled back under the watchful eye of Ultra Magnus, who had refused to wear a costume and was fully on duty as usual from his judge's perch near a makeshift stage Perceptor and Brainstorm had thrown together from spare lab materials. 

Nobody had seen anyone's costumes prior to the night, so there was a significant amount of ooing and ahhing over the most successful looks, providing a great distraction for the costume contest participants to slip mostly unnoticed behind the stage setup, preparing for the reveal to the judging panel: Ultra Magnus, Chromedome, and Cyclonus. 

As the bar continued to fill up and the noise levels increased, Swerve put on a specially composed mix tape for the ambient music that his extensive research had stated was sure to be a success: 

Something called the "Munsters Theme" kicked off the night, and things still appeared to be moving ahead as planned, all in attendance having a good night, and the Lost Light hummed with friendly chatter. 

--

The three costume competition teams ended up being 

There was the Command Coven, consisting of Rodimus, Megatron, and Drift with witch themed costumes. Drift was more than happy to provide crystal necklaces and little wands for each of them, each designed to replicate gemstones found on Earth, with Megatron's being amethyst, Rodimus adorned in carnelian, and Drift himself wearing amazonite. 

He had chosen the colours and designs in accordance with his Spectralist beliefs, as well as something Swerve had shown him called "mood boards" from Earth social data nets, which had kept him up well past his usual recharging hours. It seemed to not have impacted him at all for how thrilled he was at the excuse to dive into human spiritual practices, although he faltered somewhat at the sight of the next team's arrival...

The Medbay had submitted a team, largely thanks to Drift constantly bothering Ratchet about it, with Ratchet himself as well as First Aid and Velocity appearing in vampire themed costumes. They had no team name because Ratchet couldn't be bothered, and was more concerned about the medbay being largely unattended during the event... Although begrudgingly, he did admit to Drift that having the central medical staff immediately on hand in the bar probably wasn't all that bad of an idea.

And the final team, the Minibot Monsters, consisted of Tailgate as a swamp monster, Rewind as a mummy, and Swerve himself, wearing the world's least convincing werewolf costume. 

Swerve was the only person with two costumes, so as not to reveal his "true" costume too early in the night; What he was wearing while manning the bar and letting people in was something inspired by Gomez from the Addams Family, although nobody else on board got the reference save for Rewind, who was suddenly upset they hadn't picked that as their group theme. Tailgate was just thrilled to have shiny scales temporarily detailed over his paint job, lending a shimmering effect to his every move. 

-

Back stage, the teams began to intermingle a bit, although mindful of not violating any of Ultra Magnus' rules about potentially spoiling the integrity of the judging process by helping other teams with costumes and so on for about fifty pages. 

Drift took in Ratchet's costume, approaching a bit too tenderly for it to be the effect of any engex he may have consumed before hand. It set off Ratchet's diagnostics coding, returning a reading of increased anxiety indicated by signs of  ever so slightly rising energon consumption levels as Drift's fuel pump started to rev at a slightly elevated rate, as well as a touch of fatigue from Drift's lack of recharge time beforehand. 

"What's wrong? Are you afraid of losing?" Ratchet teased him, but only gently, probing to see where Drift was mentally at the moment. Did dressing up have bad connotations on Rodion? Was Drift relating this to some disguise or situation from his past that was potentially upsetting? Ratchet was ready to leave at any time, stress over an unmanned medbay lingering in the back of his processor; He'd be happy to grab Drift and go if need be.

"I uh, you just did a really good job with your costumes is all. I mean I expected the cloaks and all that stuff, it looks good on you by the way! But the denta..." 

Ah. 

Ratchet shuffled a bit. "Yes, apparently Velocity found in her preparatory reading that human vampire lore emphasises pointed denta. They--" 

Drift interrupted, looking at the ground, looking anywhere but Ratchet's face. "They siphon their energon, or whatever human stuff, blood, from living people. They're siphonists. Like I used to be, way back, when I needed to get fuel, and... And they're evil." 

Immediately, Ratchet realised that of course, Drift would associate the vampire fangs with so much suffering from his own past, with cruel comments and judgements forced on him by bots who had no idea what it was like to starve or have to turn to any viable alternative to survive, including taking energon directly from the fuel lines of others. 

He raised up his hands towards Drift, testing to see if he'd be welcome for a hug. Drift looked up a bit and smiled, stepping into Ratchet's arms and accepting a brief embrace before Ratchet pulled back to look him in the eyes, hands still lingering on his upper arms. 

"Listen, Drift. If this is too much for you, we can go. I can go, you don't have to miss anything. I can take this all off and it's an easy fix; It's a minor procedure to numb and file them back down, and of course we were going to do it afterwards anyway. Velocity thought it would be more realistic if we just went ahead and altered our denta for the sake of it, but I should have thought more about how that might affect you. I--"

Drift leaned up to quickly kiss Ratchet, immediately jerking his head back with eyes wide, seemingly having not fully registered the fangs that met his until they physically pressed against one another, before giving a shakey smile. 

"No, it's okay. I just wasn't ready for it. The thought of you having to resort to... Anything like that, it makes my spark hurt. It reminds me of a lot of things I don't like about how I had to get through some hard times, you know? But I don't want you to go. I want you here. Plus... Now we match, right?" 

Leave it to Drift to try to power through something so significantly distressing to him. Ratchet appreciated the effort, but saw right through it. 

"I mean it, if this bothers you, I'm ready to get back to the medbay, undo it, and we can hit the bar again together later once things have eased up a bit, no problem. The humans might think vampires are evil, and a lot of bots might think siphonists are... Frightening, but I need you to know that they're not the same thing. People are often wrong about what they don't understand, and you only did what you had to in order to survive. And I'm glad you did it. If you hadn't, you wouldn't be here. With me, at a party that will be fun if you still want to go through with all this." 

Drift optics gradually returned to their usual brightness, his signs of anxiety slowly disappearing on Ratchet's constant scans, putting him at ease as well. 

"Thank you, Ratchet. I'll be okay once the shock wears off. I think it's a good costume choice, and you really do look good in the cloak. The black makes your white paint look brighter! And it's fun to think of all the spooky human stories... And some of our own too, I guess. Imagine, a siphonst medic! You would't have any patients, that's for sure." Drift smiled, making a point to flash his own fangs. Clearly he'd recovered from the initial shock, although Ratchet decided he might try to talk it out with him at some point when they weren’t caught up in all this. He didn't want Drift to suffer any blows to his self-esteem, or fall back into a trauma related depression, even a relatively minor one. He was glad Rung had a positive policy for booking short notice sessions, which reassured him a bit. Any problems, they could all work it out together.

"Well, I think anyone who needs a doctor badly enough is willing to go to whatever doctor happens to be around, in my experience. Siphonist or not. And are you calling my paint job dull? I'll have you know I polished my armour for this. Or First Aid did, at least. He was insistent that we represent the medical team as best as possible." 

"Seems like he's learning some things from you about professionalism, Mister No Crystals in the Medbay." 

"Hey, Ultra Magnus agreed with me. It violates... Some rule." 

"Sure it does." 

--

It was finally time for the costume contest, and 

--

"What happened? What happened? Hey! Someone else get up already!" Rodimus wasn't one to panic, but he was maybe actually slightly panicking. A little bit. 

After the Great Sword had reacted to Drift's incantation, everyone had experienced simultaneous processor reset from the energy surge, and it was taking some time for people to come around from the harsh and unexpected reboot. 

It seemed everyone in the bar had been affected by the wave, not dissimilar to an electromagnetic pulse, with bots slumped over their tables, a few leaning precariously over the bar, and others laying on top of each other where there had been only standing room left. 

Rodimus had been the first to wake, having fallen into a draped position half over Megatron and half pressed into the makeshift stage curtain, briefly tangled in his distress over waking up and feeling... Odd. 

He felt like his spark was super charged, like he had ingested far too much high grade energon and was borderline frying his own circuits. It was like his fuses had been blown, but a quick self-diagnostic came back completely normal, nothing out of the ordinary, everything working fine. 

His sensory input felt magnified somehow, like he was feeling the EM fields of everyone in the bar at a hundred fold. 

It wasn't bad. Just very, very odd. Which was never a good indicator of anything, the way things tended to go on the Lost Light.

He briefly considered paging the medbay, when he caught the passed out shaped of Ratchet and Drift together in the centre of the stage; Ratchet must have picked up on whatever was happening and had made a dive for Drift, resulting in both of them clattering to the ground on top of each other. 

Everyone he would turn to for help had also been affected; There was no 

"Megatron, wake up!" 

—-

"Ratchet, oh Primus, please, are you okay?" Drift had finally woken up, exhausted by his lack of recharge on top of the huge surge of energy that had burst forth from the Great Sword, which was connected somehow to his spark energy... He was drained, but determined to get a response out of Ratchet before he could even consider his own wellbeing.  

"Ratchet! Get up! Something's happened with the sword, and it's my fault, and I don't know what happened!" Genuine fear started to seep into his vocaliser, which was likely what finally jarred Ratchet back into awareness.

"...Drift? Are you alright?" Ratchet's voice was low and rough, still drowsy from the forced reboot. Drift knelt further down to help get a grip under Ratchet's shoulders to keep him from slumping over again, being careful of anywhere that may have been injured as he collapsed. 

"My scans are showing me you’re fine, but I think I need to run a diagnostic on myself... I feel like I haven't refuelled in Primus knows how long. My fuel tank was reasonably topped up before this, is anyone else experiencing similar symptoms...?" Ratchet was slowly regaining his bearings, relying less on Drift for balance once being sat upright, although they both remained seated with their legs tucked under them in the middle of the stage. Drift felt he could relax ever so slightly now that Ratchet was responsive enough to be engaging his medical protocols. 

"We all feel a bit strange. Me and Roddy feel overcharged almost, like having two sparks in one frame. It’s… intense, but manageable. Megatron is still out, and Roddy seems to be more charged up than I am. It might be a Matrix thing with him, we don't know. My fuel levels are good, feeling the opposite of drained right now. Our internal diagnostics are coming back normal, but that's clearly wrong. Any ideas?" 

Ratchet was slow to reply. He was never slow to reply, not when it came to medical matters.

"Ratchet?" Drift grabbed Ratchet's shoulders, preparing to brace him and lay him out gently in case he lost consciousness again. 

"Drift, I need you to listen to me carefully. I don't know what happened. I don't know what's happening now. I can't identify any apparent problems in my own self-diagnostics, aside from the erroneous fuel tank level discrepancy. I'm not leaking fuel from anywhere, I'm not burning it off any faster than usual. I'd need access to the medbay for more in-depth scans, but I don't think it's a good idea to be wandering the halls right now. We should keep this contained to the incident area as much as we can..." As he continued to speak, Ratchet looked more and more stressed, more concerned. And that concerned Drift. 

"What are you getting at, why are the halls unsafe? Do you think this is some kind of attack? It originated from my Great Sword, it was... I think it was the incantation. It had to be. Ultra Magnus made sure the threat level was at a minimum--" 

"No. I think that if we went out there, we'd be making the halls dangerous ourselves. Don't you feel that?" 

Drift felt his spark grind to a halt.

"What are you talking about? I feel fine, I feel suspiciously better than fine. Are you okay? Are you dizzy?"

"...No. I'm energy depleted. I need fuel." Ratchet leaned forward until they were pressed flush against each other, their knees touching in their kneeled position on the stage, chests touching right over their spark chambers. Drift kept his hands rested on Ratchet's shoulders, grip light, unsure of what to do. 

When suddenly, and with all the strength of a field medic frame, Ratchet leaned in and closed the rest of the distance, pushing Drift backwards to the floor so his knees lifted from their bent position and his legs splayed out under Ratchet, who was now so close to laying across the top of him that it nearly took Drift's breath away.

Ratchet whispered directly against Drift's neck cables, close enough to his audials that it made Drift's spinal strut shiver and lock up. "I need warm fuel. I need your fuel.”

Drift immediately froze. This didn't sound like Ratchet. This couldn't be Ratchet. Because Ratchet would never make him feel this vulnerable, he would never do this. Ratchet isn't a siphonist...

...Or he wasn't before whatever just happened, happened. 

"Don't do this!" Drift had intended to scream it, but it came out as a whimper that only Ratchet could hear as his breath was taken away by the pointed denta scrapping gently along the central fuel lines in the side of his neck, just above his collar plating and below the corner of his tilted helm, as Ratchet’s glossa searched for the most medically sound place to puncture the lines and begin to siphon fuel. 

Imagining Ratchet's mouth full of his energon, still hot from being cycled through his systems, Ratchet’s face swirling the fuel around his fangs and smiling at him in sick contentment the way Drift knew he himself had done to others in his past filled him with a level of dread and distress that he didn't know he was still capable of feeling. 

He tried to roll to knock Ratchet off balance, but he was now pinned beneath the medic, whose wider frame was made for detaining unruly patients and built to cope with such resistance. The moment had only caused Ratchet to get a better glimpse at his central fuel lines, Drift's neck having flexed in the process, encouraging a small thrilled hum from Ratchet that terrified Drift straight to the spark. 

He couldn't let Ratchet do this. He wouldn't let him become a siphonist. Ratchet is a good mech, a kind-hearted mech, and Drift refused to imagine what would happen if Ratchet drained him of fuel and snapped out of whatever this was and hated himself the way Drift had hated himself...

...But at the same time, they were in a room full of vulnerable and disoriented bots. Many of whom had still not fully rebooted and had no chance of putting up any defence at all. If Ratchet was under some spell, or whatever was happening, then there was no guarantee that he would be able to be restrained, or that he could restrain himself, from simply going after someone else. 

Drift realised in horror that if Ratchet didn't get his fuel fix from him, right now, he would likely just hurt someone else while in this trance-like state, focused solely on satisfying a feral hunger... Drift could at least relate, and was awake enough to consent as much as possible under the circumstances, and it didn't take all that much effort for Drift to talk himself into going limp. 

As he rested back flat against the stage floor, Ratchet briefly froze, giving Drift a flash of hope that he was coming to his senses, that his medical protocols were overriding whatever this was and that he would immediately jump off and apologise and demand another systems check before they started working out whatever was going on. 

But instead, Ratchet made some awful little low trilling noise, lowering more of the weight of his frame against Drift's chest, and whispered into his neck: "Your vents are spewing out so much heat. Your fuel will be so warm in my mouth. Listen to my voice, Drift. You know how much you mean to me. I won't hurt you, I'll never hurt you. I'm a medic. I want you to feel good, be healthy. Forever. I want you to feel the way I do." 

Drift was caught between old traumas and the trauma currently unfolding. He had no response, cleansing fluid building up behind his optics, threatening to cloud his vision and steam up his lenses from the inside from all the heat his rapidly spinning spark was generating throughout his systems. 

He vaguely became aware of some almighty commotion happening somewhere in the bar, but he didn't dare attempt to move. He couldn't have even if he tried. It was painful hearing Ratchet like this, the kind voice worn by age that he was familiar with tainted by something rough and sinister, for all the friendliness it still contained. 

"Did you read all the human myths, or just about the crystals? It seems the Earth vampires can turn another human into one by sharing blood, their energon. After I take a sip from you, would you bite into me? Or would you prefer if I clean cut one of my fuel lines for you to suck on? Would you do that for me? We match, after all.” Drift could feel Ratchet flash a wide smile into the side of his neck. 

Ratchet's voice was starting to have some kind of cognitive effect on Drift's processor, numbing him to the waves of anxiety and making the noises in the bar seem even further away, sinking him into Ratchet's grip, making it impossible to activate his own vocaliser. 

"We could be together forever, Drift. No more flitting in and out of each others lives. Security. Safety. Stability." 

With Drift completely flattened beneath him, helm lolled to the side and central fuel line finally exposing the medically ideal spot to place a bite, Ratchet was satisfied. He leaned in and sunk his pointed denta into the perfect centre of the line, immediately creating a suction and drawing a swift stream of warm energon into his mouth, a deep moan from Drift weakly rising from beneath his grasp--

--And at that moment, Rodimus with immense precision drew down a bar stool leg directly into Ratchet's helm, the metallic clang echoing through the room as Ratchet’s head was forced away from Drift’s neck, a pool of energon steaming up from the tear in the central fuel line, ripped open further by Ratchet’s pointed denta never having had the chance to loosen the bite first. 

Rodimus quickly put himself between Drift and Ratchet, kicking Ratchet in the shoulder to create more distance while avoiding harming him as much as possible before turning to face Drift. 

“Primus, Drift, we shouldn’t have left you two alone, some of the others started waking up and Megatron’s still struggling a little with the hard reboot, are you okay? Drift?” 

Drift barely registered what Rodimus was panicking about as he was only gradually coming out of whatever state Ratchet had put him in. He felt like his temperature regulator has to be malfunctioning now, or perhaps he had just lost too much heat from pushing himself too hard and venting off too much of the heated air that speedster frames tended to build up. 

Setting himself upright, he relied on Rodimus for support, immediately showing the tear in his fuel line, optics slightly foggy and looking off to the side. “I need to wrap this up… It’s not as bad as it could be, but it really is, isn’t it? What’s wrong with Ratchet, Roddy?” It was hard to hear Drift’s voice, usually so lively and firm, take a low and demure tone made rough by the damage to his neck. 

They both looked over to where Ratchet had been unceremoniously kicked on his back, Rodimus continuing to stay tensed and alert in front of Drift in case Ratchet tried to make another move.

Cautiously, Rodimus spoke up as his right hand helped Drift hold the fuel line edges together; Rodimus winced at how much it must hurt, but Drift was making no complaints as it was slowly and carefully wrapped by some previously subspaced tape. In fact, Drift seemed… Sad, more than scared. He was being too quiet, moving too little even considering his injury, and his EM field was full of exhaustion and distress. 

“What the hell happened? Ratchet, you… I didn’t hit you that hard, did I? Can you answer me? What were you doing?”  He wanted to ask why, but one thing at a time. He suspected that Ratchet didn’t know the answer to that last one, and Rodimus didn’t want to press someone who was potentially unstable and clearly dangerous at the moment. He pressed his back closer to Drift, fully ready to defend him if needed. 

Rodimus took in Ratchet’s crumpled pose, still laid out where he had been kicked back, a look of absolute shock and strain on his face as his fists curled tightly against the stage floor, steaming energon dipping from around his slightly open mouth in small pools as he ex-vented heavily. 

As Ratchet shook his helm a bit, he replied with an absolutely wrecked voice, as if it had been his vocaliser nearly ripped out instead of Drift’s. “I, Rodimus, I don’t know how long I’ll be lucid for. My fuel tank levels are registering within perfectly normal levels, but it feels like I’m being constantly drained, like I’m losing fuel from a leak that doesn’t exist—“

“So you put a leak in Drift?” Rodimus knew he shouldn’t have said anything as Ratchet’s head whipped up and stared him directly in the optics, the shattered look on his face so unfamiliar on Ratchet’s features that it startled Rodimus to see it. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My scans are coming back fine, all of them, I can’t find what’s wrong.” Real panic was seeping into Ratchet’s vocaliser, a bizarre and awful contrast to his usual calm steadiness even in the worst of situations. “You don’t understand, Rodimus, whatever energy the Great Sword released has altered my systems, perhaps everyone’s systems… Drift said you both felt overcharged, but I feel energy depleted, and it’s doing something to my processor. I feel so strange and— And Drift.” 

The entire time he spoke, without his knowledge, his glossa lightly flicked out here and there to catch some spare flecks of Drift’s energon that had settled around his mouth. It set off a sick feeling in Rodimus’ spark, as it was clear Ratchet genuinely couldn’t help it, as if his coding had gone severely wrong somewhere. It reminded him of a cyberfox licking its paws after a hunt. It was too unrefined and subtly animalistic for a bot like Ratchet. It looked wrong, it felt wrong, and he could feel a surge of concerned sadness burst forth from Drift’s EM field behind him. Evidently he’d finished wrapping his fuel line and was now focused on Ratchet. 

Ratchet noticed and finally moved, only slightly to avoid startling Rodimus into unnecessary action, as he picked up on Drift’s distressed EM signals. 

“Drift, Primus, are—“ Ratchet’s optics went wide and he jerked back oddly, not moving from his place lest Rodimus make a move, but as though he were torn so completely that he couldn’t move. “—My medical protocols demand your neck be examined. If I do it, I don’t know what I’ll do. Where’s Velocity and First Aid?” 

—-

Megatron bellowed across the bar, “They’re behaving oddly, get ready to fight them off!” 

—-

"Drift, we're medics. We know where to bite to take the most energon straight from the central fuel line the fastest. I just did it to you, and being ripped free like that can rip the cable lining and weaken the integrity of the fuel line under pressure. It ruptures and causes a major bleed. It can kill someone. It will kill someone. If at any point we start failing to restrain ourselves, you have to incapacitate us. Tie us up. Do whatever. We are officially dangerous until this is resolved. I can't say my behaviour will be predictable, or sensible."

He then turned abruptly to Rodimus and Megatron, Ultra Magnus off to his opposite side, ready to intervene if needed. 

"One of you, or both of you, I am asking you to do whatever you need to do if I go after Drift again. If I go for his central fuel lines again, he's already damaged. Another bite will weaken the line structure, its integrity will fail, and he will lose too much energon to be within safe levels. His nanites will take far too long to repair a gash that size. Please." 

Ratchet hung his head, avoiding everyone's optics. 

"I am a medic. I heal bots. I don't kill them. 

---

AND THAT’S AS FAR AS I GOT, I hope to finish this up and edit it for AO3 soon, Happy Halloween! 

[divumquevoluptas]

“There will be poems”

(This is my long-winded journey to interpreting this line from episode 9 of The Terror (2018) because my first reaction was wrong (or incomplete?) and I now feel the need to compensate... Having finished watching The Terror all of two days ago, I have only just now discovered the wealth of top-tier analysis on this show, and feel almost certain that the points I want to make are super obvious to almost everyone at this point but I’m writing this because I really, really need to talk about it. I have so many feelings. So here goes.)

One of the many scenes that really resonated with me emotionally was Fitzjames’ death scene in episode 9, and in particular Mr. Bridgens tearfully assuring him that he was a good man and that “there will be poems”. This single line made me burst into tears at the sheer tragedy of it all. Because when I first heard it, I interpreted it in a very negative, very sad way. I saw it, essentially, as the well-meaning, and sincerely-meant words of a man (Mr. Bridgens) to whom these things (poems, being remembered) mean something important, spoken to another man (Fitzjames), who no longer views those things as important. Fitzjames, after all, now views the desire to be remembered in such a way as foolish and futile in the face of the death and suffering himself and his men are experiencing, in the face of the extremity of the situation and the absence (and the vanity) of all relevant social context. I believed that at this point Mr. Bridgens simply had not come to the realisation that Fitzjames had about the reality of the situation. The line therefore appeared to me to be an expression of that very futility. Mr. Bridgens’ statement, I thought, could only be interpreted by Fitzjames himself as a sad reminder both of the man that he used to be and the illusions that he harboured, and of the ultimate emptiness of those illusions.

However, once I had recovered from the initial emotional impact of the scene, I almost immediately realised that there could be a very different interpretation of these words. The statement can be read, deceptively superficially, as an acknowledgement that Fitzjames truly was a good man, regardless of his origins or motives, and that the things he did made a real positive impact on the expedition and on the men in it (and on Mr. Bridgens specifically, of course). All of this means something beyond the realm of “vanity” – Mr. Bridgens’ praise of Fitzjames comes from someone who, as a man serving under him as a member of the expedition, has had real and tangible experience of the Commander’s actions and their impact. However, in order to truly appreciate this positive interpretation, I also have note the significance of the words chosen to convey praise and the significance of the man who speaks them.

Mr. Bridgens is arguably the character who has the most explicit and most consistent relationship with literature and poetry as a source of comfort and inspiration, as well as a means of establishing and developing important relationships, most notably with Harry Peglar. Mr. Bridgens’ reliance on classical literature for comfort and inspiration is neither a form of escapism, nor, as I mistakenly assumed, does it derive from ignorance of his situation. The support which literature provides is by no means superficial; it remains with him through thick and thin, to the very end of his life. The words “there will be poems” therefore mean something very, very important to him personally and practically. Mr. Bridgens is claiming that Fitzjames is a man whose life and actions can and “will” be counted as a source of comfort and inspiration to people. Fitzjames, for Mr. Bridgens, is a man worthy of being numbered among literary heroes. I do not believe it would be a stretch to say that among these are the Classical exempla which littered Victorian Classical education.

This is interesting because Fitzjames himself has been shown to implicitly link himself to important Classical figures (e.g. in episode 1: “I was thinking of… Caesar crossing the Rubicon”). Fitzjames clearly does this in order to bolster his stories and to feed his vanity. He does it, we realise in the context of his confession to Crozier in episode 8, essentially in order to obscure his “true” self, which he sees as fraudulent and unworthy, and of overcoming these insecurities. Caesar is chosen because Victorian Education held figures like him up as exempla, projecting Victorian values onto Classical figures (partly) in order to lend those values weight and importance. This is very much what Fitzjames does with himself: he projects himself, or an ideal of himself, onto figures like Caesar in order to highlight his own importance. He relies on Classical figures (amongst other things) for validation. (At least initially – we could argue about the significance of his costume at Carnivale in episode 6. Perhaps this is a return to his previous, vain, foolish, self in a more self-aware manner. The Carnivale in part represents “home”, England, “all that we miss”. Fitzjames donning a Roman costume here, I think, is an acknowledgement that he has moved on from that part of himself which used Classical figures for validation, a recognition that although he might still “miss” this aspect, it is no longer part of him).

However, Mr. Bridgens’ statement is not about validation, or about projecting modern men onto the past in order to aggrandise them. Mr. Bridgens has personal experience of both the importance of literature and history, and of the goodness of Fitzjames himself. He views Fitzjames as great independently of any comparison, because he has truly known him, and therefore his implicit linking of Fitzjames and great historical figures/exempla is completely organic. The words are not spoken in an attempt to validate Fitzjames, either for Fitzajmes’ benefit or for Mr. Bridgens’ own comfort – and after all, Mr. Bridgens does not need to see Fitzjames in this way, he already has his books to turn to and does not appear to need any more tangible sources of comfort and inspiration, the classics work for him in themselves (though perhaps not entirely independently of the Victorian social/educational context as a whole). Mr. Bridgens says “there will be poems” simply because he has personal experience of Fitzjames’ actions and nature, and independently makes the link with his experience of classic literature. Fitzjames’ actions have a comparable effect on him to that of Xenophon’s account of the Ten Thousand. His statement is therefore a very profound acknowledgement, a recognition. He does not need to project Fitzjames onto Classical figures in order to make sense of him, to validate his station etc. as Fitzjames himself does; he is merely acknowledging the goodness he sees in him independently. I know this may be labouring the point, but I do want to emphasise that Mr. Bridgens sees the truth and the greatness in Fitzjames which Fitzjames, who had to make hollow appeals to the Classics in order to project said greatness, did not see in himself. Mr. Bridgens’ appeal is anything but hollow.

James Fitzjames deserves to be remembered, in poetry, in literature, in culture, as a source of comfort and inspiration: as an exemplum. We have this on the best possible authority: that of a man who is an expert in finding comfort in poetry, and who recognises his feelings towards his Commander as the same feelings he holds towards literature. I can, now, only imagine Fitzjames’ recognition of Mr. Bridgens’ authority on this matter, and the realisation of what those words mean coming from him. It does not matter whether there are in fact poems or not; Fitzjames dies knowing that his actions have been great and good, have meant something to someone in themselves, knowing that his true self has been known and understood to be worthy. He dies understanding that himself. And that is, now, more than enough for him.

(So much for that. Was it strictly necessary to spend a thousand words purely for the benefit of working this all out for myself coherently? Probably not, but I love Mr. Bridgens, I love James Fitzjames, The Terror is Very Good and I have too many feelings with nowhere to put them.)

Tl; dr - James Fitzjames is Valid and Mr. Bridgens knows it.

[badgirlsinterviews]

The author of “Bad Girls” says her novel is the work “of a writer, not a sex worker” [Interview]

As a teenager, Camila Sosa Villada started dressing as a woman while also becoming an avid reader. She now acts, sings, and writes. In this interview with Infobae, she discusses the way in which trans people are marginalized and how their cultural achievements are silenced when they are solely spoken of in relation to sex work.

Written by Gisele Sousa Dias

11/05/19

Source: Infobae

Camila Sosa Villada to Infobae: They have always erased us by saying that us travestis are just sex workers. (Adrián Escandar)

Although she has triumphed on the stage with her one-woman show, she has sung in bars, has starred as a film protagonist, and has just published a novel (which leaves a long-lasting impact on readers), Camila Sosa Villada doesn’t define herself as an actress, singer, or writer. 

“I have also done sex work, made outdoor clothing, cleaned houses at an hourly rate, sold ice-cream, and worked as a travelling salesperson. I’m not about fitting myself into specific definitions - not even ‘travesti’ is a label that’s large enough to define me”, she tells Infobae.

She is 37 years old, comes from the city of Córdoba in Argentina, and published Bad Girls in March (Tusquets, edited by Juan Forn). However, Camila’s relationship with books began with the Bible for Children, the first book she ever read when she was 5 or 6 years old. In primary school, a few of her teachers nourished her with poetry books written by Federico García Lorca. By the time she was at high school, she was already an avid reader. It was around then, when she was 14 or 15 years old, that she began to dress as a woman when she went out at night. Later on, when she had already began her degree in Social Communication in the National University of Córdoba, was when she began sex work. 

“My parents had been taught to hate their daughter.” (Adrián Escandar)

“Did you start writing when you'd get back home from the park at night?”

“No - I’ve always written. The nights I spent in Sarmiento Park in Córdoba just gave me a lot of material. In 2004, I had a blog called “La novia de Sandro” [Sandro’s Girlfriend] in which I wrote about many things, not just things related to sex work, but I deleted it when I began to gain recognition in “Carnes tolendas” (the one-woman show which premiered in 2009). I’d have gotten embarrassed if people had found out I’d done sex work, or if my mum and dad had found out. 

“Are you still embarrassed about it?”

“Not anymore, of course. I no longer consider it relevant to continue to speak about sex work: it is something from the past which has stuck to me, which is brought up to prevent me from talking about other things such as literature, theatre, or my thoughts on society. Perpetuating the idea that travestis are only sex workers prevents us from moving forward and keeps us far in the past, with people still saying “aww, look at those poor travestis, selling themselves on the street corner.” People are scared of us having the ability to overcome that barrier, and show the world what we’re really capable of.”  

In the prologue to Bad Girls, Forn writes of the coexistence of “the two aspects of the transgender world which society is most repelled and dismayed by: the fury and the celebration of being travesti.” There are those who die young, toxic travestis, heroines with imperfections, and there’s drama - but there’s also a shared love and protection between the travestis of the park, who redefine loneliness. 

The front cover of “Bad Girls”, which shows a photo saved by the trans memory archive. 

“Were you trying to raise awareness about the experience of travestis?”

“No, I didn’t write it to raise awareness about anything, nor to push any kind of agenda. It’s as if there’s a constant need to have a necrological dialogue about the trans collective, and what that does is force us to remain marginalized. I mean, did you know that there’s a travesti who’s a soprano singer? Did you know that there are travestis who are philosophers? Well, I wrote a novel; the best thing I can do is stand up for it that as the work of a writer, a sex worker. I would prefer to face the harassment of the police, which can be solved with money or a blowjob, than the constant persecution of trans women keep us as we were. It’s undeniable that we are in the middle of a genocide and that we need state policies to protect us from being murdered, but we can’t move forward because the conversation doesn’t even move on from that point. Us travestis are doing something in society, and that’s why it’s important to not only speak of us in relation to sex work.  

“What do us travestis have to speak about? Love.” (Adrán Escandar)

“What is not being said about the lives of travestis?”

“As terrible as sex work sounds, especially for the trans people who’s only chance of survival is through doing it, it does allow great things to happen. We were living in our own bodies with no reservations, exhibiting a feminism that was clumsy and blind with no critical backing, saying: “this is my life, this is my body, and I’ll do what I want with them”, even if that meant dying, if it meant getting beaten up by clients. How many people do you know that would go that far for something they consider legitimate in their lives. Take a look at how, even with all the threats we faced, we keep on living anyway. That’s why I think it has been us travestis who have made a profound impact on the feminist movement. 

“I didn’t write it to raise awareness about anything, nor to push any kind of agenda,” says Camila. (Adrián Escandar)

Camila says she was lucky. She got out of sex work, not because she was trying to; things just turned out that way. After Carnes Tolendas, the on-stage portrayal of a travesti (the show in which Sosa combines a number of Federico García Lorca characters with her own life), came Mia, in which she played the film’s protagonist (a modern-day scavenger who adopts a girl who has lost her mother), and is joined by Maite Lanata and Rodrigo de la Serna. Afterwards, she starred in La viuda de Rafael [Rafael’s Widow], a miniseries that was shown on Canal 7. With her growth as an artist, and her current preparations to present her novel at the Feria del Libro, and introduce her new book (Tesis sobre la domesticación, which will be her fourth published work), she has disproved the prediction her father made when she began dressing as a woman: “One day someone’s going to knock on my door and tell me that you’ve been found dead, left in a ditch.” Camila speaks about her parents, and gets emotional for the first time in the interview. 

“Your family was poor, but you had books…”

“We didn’t have great luxuries in my house, but on my birthday, at Christmas, on Kings’ Day, my parents would get me books as gifts. My grandparents couldn’t read or write, so when someone in the family had the desire to do so, I think it created in them a profound sense of pride. It’s the pride of poverty; taking pride in someone who can grasp knowledge and keep it.”

“How is your relationship with your parents today? Did they understand?

“I believe that understanding and acceptance aren’t the same thing. They had learned to hate their daughter; that was what was taught to them, to harbour a deep hatred for a daughter that deviated from the norm. Not just because she dressed as girl - she was different because she wrote, because at 15 years old she began reading about communism, and that seemed terrible to them. I believe us travestis are the fruit of a number of generations that have been working towards a travesti being born into the family. I believe I was the result of that path, of the expectations that the women in my family had, of the need to take revenge upon a system which had deeply hurt them. I believe that my family, which has always been made up of people who would abandon their lives, their children, their health, their relaxation and their desire to be happy in pursuit of an exploitative employer, needed someone like me to appear and say “all of this is bad, let’s do things differently.” That’s why I believe that travestis are born into families that need them, regardless of whether or not those families are able to later cope with them. 

From her birthplace in Córdoba to Recoleta, Buenos Aires, where she speaks with Infobae. (Adrián Escandar)

“You said that when we only speak about travestis and prostitution, we then silence their cultural contributions. What else is being silenced?

“I believe we have to speak about love, because one of the worst ways we are excluded as a collected is being separated from society’s networks of affection. (Néstor) Perlonger (poet and activist) said that, “We don’t want to be pursued, nor learned about, nor discriminated against, nor killed, nor cured, nor analyzed, nor explained, nor tolerated, nor understood: what we want is to be desired.” To me, that’s so, so, incredible. I believe it’s important to make the love stories, sentimental stories, and erotic stories of travestis visible, because that is what is going to uncover how our bodies are in the face of many people’s ignorance. As a sex worker, I never felt such terrible discomfort and the desire to disappear that I felt with the men I loved after I left sex work. Men who didn’t know how to touch, how to kiss, who didn’t think of me as sensitive or that I needed to be caressed and kissed. It’s as if, even in love, we aren’t seen as sensitive; only an object of change.

[shannonthao]

Social Media & Participatory Culture

Social media is not social media without participation. Hinton & Hjorth (2013) highlight in their book, Understanding Social Media, that although participation isn’t exactly anything new when it comes to media, new communication technologies have taken modes of participation to a new level. For example, in response to mass media, people would traditionally participate by writing letters to organizations. Now with the internet and social media, people are engaging with the media that they consume in various ways, which Hinton & Hjorth argue makes audiences media producers even if they are not the original producer of that media. This is what they refer to as user generated content (UGC). On the other hand, there is user created content (UCC), which is original media produced with the intention of sharing it with others to consume. The intention piece is key in differentiating UGC from UCC. Although simply forwarding and sharing content that you consume is a form of participation and it may help you find meaning in it, UGC may not always be of great value to other people. For example, personal information you include on a generic social media profile may interest some people, but it mostly serves as useful data for the social media platforms to collect. UCC can also be described as content that is carefully crafted with creativity, emotion, as well as social, cultural, and sometimes economic capital. In essence, though, we can all be producers of media and we can all contribute to participatory culture.

Participatory culture is an open space that supports artistic expression and civic engagement. Participatory culture includes, but is not limited to, affiliations with online communities, production and consumption of creative content, collaborative problem-solving to develop new knowledge, and shaping the circulation of media. In the growing body of research on participatory culture, researchers find a number of potential benefits, mainly opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, diversification of cultural expression, development of valuable career competencies, and a more empowered concept of citizenship. In defining participatory culture, I found fascinating parallels with the connected learning model, particularly that they are both strongly associated with informal learning and have implications for relationship-building and access to different opportunities. Social media is relevant as it has facilitated the ways in which we can participate in things that interest us and encourage us to engage more deeply and actively in our communities. These can also be described as “affinity spaces,” as put by Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison, and Wiegel in their paper, “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” (2009). Affinity spaces offer powerful opportunities for learning because they have the capacity to bridge differences in age, class, race, gender, and educational level. Given all of this, it’s shocking to learn that educators have been behind in their understanding of the potentially positive influences of participatory culture on their students. Jenkins mentioned in this TEDxNYED talk (2010) that some schools have even completely blocked off sites that actually may enrich students’ learning. Formal education has remained mostly conservative, which has resulted in several problems affecting student achievement. If the administration, as well as parents, truly prioritized their students’ success, they would incorporate the needed tools and programs to better foster their informal learning from participatory cultures, which will then support their development of critical skills, community-building, and other great opportunities. It seems like it should be evident by now that learning, social media, and participatory culture are all greatly interrelated and everyone should learn to recognize the potential advantages in understanding and engaging with then.

I largely identify as a member of the anime fan community, so I was thrilled to see even the briefest reference to anime during Jenkins’ TED talk. Specifically, that anime fans will voice off their opposition to any live-action anime adaptation that casts a white actor to play a character of color (and not just adaptations for anime; consider the recent Mulan live-action adaptation that almost cast a white person as Mulan’s love interest). This brings up a major point that is shared across the literature, which is that participatory culture has been able to empower people to engage in more civic or political conversations. Historically, young people have felt disconnected from politics as it has been perceived to be something “almost entirely ‘over their heads’” even if it is something that may significantly impact them, like presidential elections. However, the rise of participatory culture has opened up opportunities for young people to engage more in political and civic debates. In my personal life, I certainly feel an increasing desire to get involved in more online activism (not just the superficial #PrayForXYZ stuff) because it can be very impactful when effective. Anime is something I am incredibly passionate about and through my Instagram, I have discovered a wonderful community because of our shared love for the medium. Also, despite a lot of animation having shifted from 2D to more 3D/CGI over the years, anime has mostly stuck with 2D animation and have still managed to share some of the most beautiful stories ever. If there was ever a threat to disrespect the authenticity or shift the narrative of these stories (aka, an American live-action adaptation), I would not hold back from expressing my frustrations online. Similarly, if there was ever an attack against marginalized groups, I would participate with my fellow people in speaking out against it.

Under the current circumstances due to COVID-19, I do believe there is something unique about the participatory culture taking place online these days. Isolation can take a toll on our mental health because humans are naturally social creatures, so at this time, we need to have healthy outlets to regulate our emotions. If social media wasn’t already a big part of our lives, it definitely is more so than ever right now. Since many of us are unable to connect with people outside of our homes, we’re relying heavily on social media to accomplish that. For example, I notice a lot of YouTube channels pushing out more videos, likely because they are stuck at home and want to keep their viewers entertained during this pandemic, but it can also be a form of solidarity. I am aware that not everyone may be experiencing this pandemic in the same way due to differing levels of privilege, but getting through this is going to be a collective effort. So while the media has been questionable and exposing the worst of people, it’s also exposed the best of people and what is possible when many people are able to unite (in spirit) against something that affects everyone.

[madstars-festival]

HIRA MOHIBULLAH: “WITH ADVERTISING, I HELP THOSE WHO DON’T HAVE A VOICE”

Hira Mohibullah is an expert is telling stories that have a positive impact. We’re delighted to welcome her to our Final Jury this year representing BBDO Pakistan, where she is Executive Creative Director.

As the most awarded female creative in Pakistan, Hira Mohibullah believes that storytellers have a responsibility to tell the right kind of stories – especially in an industry as influential as advertising.

Her most notable campaigns include #BridalUniform, which raised awareness of the prevalence of underage brides; #BeatMe for UN Women, which challenged men to “beat” women (at something they excel at; and Chai Ka Nishaan (The Hot Tea Stain), a campaign that raised awareness on child burns caused through negligence around hot tea."

Since joining BBDO Pakistan four years ago, she has won more than 170 international awards for her work. A mother of two, Mohibullah is also an advocate for gender balance in the workplace and helped set up a day-care room at BBDO to encourage more working mothers to join the workforce. 

You live and work in Pakistan. Did you grow up there, too?

I’m a third culture kid, and so I don’t really know what place I call home. I grew up in the Middle East and moved to Pakistan when I was 14. I have very fond memories of my childhood and, quite contrary to popular belief, it was fun being a kid in Saudi Arabia! I had friends from all over the world, and from a very young age I was exposed to different cultures and languages, which I feel has shaped who I am today as a creative.  

What led you to a career in advertising: did you always dream of impacting positive social change through your work?

Growing up, I’ve hopped (all too rapidly) from one dream career to another. One thing that I’ve always known about myself is that I get bored with one thing real quick, and so the versatility that advertising brings to my life every single day is what makes it such a perfect match. Right after I completed my A Levels (after having taken every subject under the sun), I chanced upon the communication design course. There it was, my love for creative writing and design brought miraculously together. Advertising was the most obvious choice after that, and I’ve never looked back since.

In my twenties, while my friends were writing their personal statements for college applications full to the brim with life-changing struggles, I was wishing I had more of a story to tell. I grew up in a house with parents who did not believe in gender discrimination. They had two daughters and they gave us the best education to the best of their abilities. There was absolutely no pressure on us to fit a certain mould. With a great support system, I grew up living a sheltered life of privilege. But today, I realise that’s what my story is: with advertising I use my position of privilege to help those who don’t have a voice. It's all come full circle.

#BridalUniform was an incredibly powerful campaign, which won countless awards – including several at AD STARS. What challenges did you face in bringing it to life?

As with most pro-bono campaigns we do at BBDO, we had absolutely no money to spend on this one. So getting the word out to the entire nation, that it was not okay to marry off underage girls, seemed impossible. That challenge gave birth to a genius solution: we hijacked the biggest bridal fashion show of Pakistan, one that was already being covered by all major media channels in the country. We partnered Ali Xeeshan, Pakistan's foremost bridal wear designer and launched the Bridal Uniform: a merger between a little girl's school uniform and embellishments from a typical bridal outfit. Amidst the pomp and show, out walked the showstopper: a little girl wearing the #BridalUniform, symbolising the trade-off that happens when a child is deprived of her right to an education and instead is dressed as someone's wife. Without spending a dime, we were able to rack up one billion organic impressions.

Creativity can help to bring people together in times of crisis: are there any inspiring initiatives taking place in Pakistan right now? What is BBDO doing to keep its staff motivated during the coronavirus crisis?

It’s overwhelming to see everybody fighting on the same front, for the same cause. It’s brought the industry together in a way nothing ever has. Every brand I work on is doing their part to help the nation cope with this unprecedented struggle. We’re all working from home currently (being amongst the first few to implement the policy) and besides a few teething issues in the start, we’re meeting all our timelines even when the work has doubled in amount. My team and I usually get the brainstorming out of the way earlier in the day and then go our separate ways to finish off the pending tasks. Keeping meticulous checklists of individual workflows has helped me stay afloat by giving me a good visibility on the tasks lined up for the entire week.

What does your typical day look like?

I have two kids who I bring to work with me (a 6 year-old and a 7 month old) and in pre-COVID times, I used to joke about “traveling” to work because I would lug around all their stuff in a mini carry-on... everyday! These days in lockdown, I start early, get my 6 year-old’s homework done and ship him off to another room for his online classes while I find myself a quiet corner to tackle my checklist for the day.  

Do you have a process – is there a way you work through a problem? How much of your creative process happens subconsciously?

I’ve hardly ever had an idea strike me in a dream or in the shower, unlike many other creatives I know. For me, cracking a brief requires a formal session (always with a notebook in hand) where I start from a pain-point, deep-dive into real-world insights, colloquially unlock the idea for relevance, and finally tell the story in the voice of the brand. Also, being bi-lingual helps me tackle the creative process from two different vernacular angles.

Who are your creative heroes and why?

Fernando Machado. He’s brave, unapologetically relentless, he has an eye for what will absolutely shake the world and he’s not afraid to do it!  

You recently spoke at TEDxLahore. What did you talk was about?

My joint talk at TEDx was about the importance of telling the right kind of stories. The stories we hear growing up shape us into the people we are today: they define our limits, our fears and our dreams. As advertisers, we call ourselves storytellers, and so imagine the kind of power we hold to change the lives of those around us. Moiz Khan and I talked about the stories we’ve told in our time at BBDO Pakistan, and how they have positively impacted our society.

As the most awarded female creative in Pakistan, do you have advice for others hoping to ‘make it’ in advertising?

No one makes it in advertising on their own! Find your tribe. Go out there and look for like-minded people and a place that matches your vision.

Are you working on anything interesting right now?

Pakistanis love their tea. They have tea for breakfast, tea in the afternoon and then in the evening. There’s tea with snacks and tea over gossip sessions. In a shocking revelation, we learnt that 80% of child burns happen due to hot tea spills. Now in a country where tea consumption is at an all-time high, there is considerable talk around removing tea stains from clothes but none around the perils of being negligent while preparing or drinking that tea. After a successful first leg of the campaign where we were able to bring down the number of accidents by 50%, we’re now working on Round 2 this year!  

You attended AD STARS in 2018. Do you have any favourite memories of Busan?

My fondest memory of Busan is going to The Library of Mystery Literature, a quaint little place which is a library, a cafe and a museum all rolled into one.  Due to an ongoing book-club, they were closed at the time I wanted to visit. I called up the owner, and with my receptionist translating everything for me, told her it was the only day I could come visit and she generously opened up the cafe especially for me. There I met the famous crime novelist Kim Seong-jong, read a crime novel with a cup of buckwheat tea offset against a book-reading in a foreign language… it was really something else.

Hira Mohibullah will judge the Brand Experience & Activation, Creative eCommerce, Direct, Media and PR categories at the AD STARS 2020 Awards. To enter, submit your work before 15th May via adstars.org.

[cathlalalala-blog1]

Domestic Violence in Teenage Intimate Relationships

This blog talks about the abuse that teenagers are experiencing while in a romantic relationship. All information, data, and excerpts are based on a research paper by Angela Griffiths,  “Domestic violence in teenage intimate relationships: Young people’s views on awareness, prevention, intervention and regaining one’s sense of well-being” . This blog is made to target specific audience such as parents and especially teenagers who are in a relationship right now for them to know the cause and effect of violence among teenage relationships and fully understand the connection of these violent events to the mental health of the people involved. 

RESEARCH PAPER

Domestic violence (DV) and abuse in teenage intimate relationships, or teenage partner violence (TPV), is a prevalent but hidden issue, the impact of which can include mental health problems, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. This study sought to gain young people’s views on awareness, prevention, intervention and regaining a sense of well-being following the experience of an unhealthy relationship. 310 mainstream school pupils aged 14–18 (161 girls and 149 boys) completed questionnaires and were subsequently invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. In addition, four young women with personal experience of TPV who had sought help from a DV prevention organisation participated in semi-structured interviews.  Participants felt there is a lack of awareness and understanding of TPV amongst young people and adults, as well as uncertainty and confusion amongst young people over healthy/unhealthy behaviours. 

There was a desire for earlier, more regular, more interactive, more relevant and more accessible education and information, for someone to talk to confidentially and for help to build confidence and self-esteem. There was little cultural or ethnic diversity amongst the participants in this study. No young men known to have personal experience of TPV were represented. TPV is a prevalent but hidden problem that affects both girls and boys and can have a serious negative impact on a young person’s mental health and well-being. Educational psychologists are well placed to help schools address the issues related to TPV highlighted in this study. 

This research paper shows the analysis based on the answers of the respondents from the school-based questionnaires, open questions, and semi-structured interviews. The graphs are the representation of the result from the questions and interviews. The research concludes that teenage partner violence is a hidden problem that can have a huge negative impact on the teenager’s mental health and well-being. The researcher has found that teenagers who get into a relationship has little to no knowledge of the complexity of being in a romantic relationship.

VOCABULARY

Depression -  is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable.

Paradigm -  a typical example or pattern of something; a model.

Relationship -  the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.

Retrospective -  looking back on or dealing with past events or situations.

Psychology -  is a multifaceted discipline and includes many sub-fields of study such areas as human development, sports, health, clinical, social behavior and cognitive processes.

Counselling -  is a talking therapy that involves a trained therapist listening to you and helping you find ways to deal with emotional issues.

COMPREHENSION

Adolescent dating violence is an issue that influences numerous teenagers. Indifference and clashes emerge in close relationship, which prompts dating misuse like beating, pushing, kicking, slapping and forcing partner for harmful sexual practice. These activities have a profound impact on the victim as well as to the abuser's psychological health. The research was conducted through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. An initial draft of the questionnaire was constructed to address the research questions arrived at from the literature review.  A brief description of what constitutes a healthy and unhealthy relationship was included on the front of the questionnaire, which included examples to help clarify what was meant by ‘unhealthy’.

If you are a teen in an unhealthy relationship, please seek help and tell a trusted adult. is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable. Participants felt there is a lack of awareness and understanding of TPV amongst young people and adults, as well as uncertainty and confusion amongst young people over healthy/unhealthy behaviours. There was a desire for earlier, more regular, more interactive, more relevant and more accessible education and information, for someone to talk to confidentially and for help to build confidence and self-esteem. 

Signs of Abusive Relationships

Important warning signs that you may be involved in an abusive relationship include when someone:

harms you physically in any way, including slapping, pushing, grabbing, shaking, smacking, kicking, and punching

tries to control different aspects of your life, such as how you dress, who you hang out with, and what you say

frequently humiliates you or makes you feel unworthy (for example, if a partner puts you down but tells you that he or she loves you)

threatens to harm you, or to self-harm, if you leave the relationship

twists the truth to make you feel you are to blame for your partner's actions

demands to know where you are at all times

constantly becomes jealous or angry when you want to spend time with your friends

Ways to Prevent Abuse in the Relationship

1. Do not let your partner dominate you. 

It all starts with your partner taking decisions for you and controlling your life by using abusive techniques. There becomes a power imbalance in your relationship and your partner makes you feel like a victim more than a spouse. When you begin to notice such signals, it is better to address the situation there and then instead of prolonging it to another time. Seek help from family, friends or therapist as and when required.

2. Constantly communicate with each other.

Communication is the most important key in any relationship because without communication, misunderstandings will come and will eventually ruin the relationship. Always be open to one another and respect one’s opinion, feelings, and perspective in life. 

3. Look for a professional.

If things are becoming worse already, it is better to do counselling and seek help from the professional. They know the best thing to do in a rocky relationship. 

REFLECTION AND CRITICISM

1. Do you agree with the authors’ rationale for setting up the experiments as they did?

- Yes, I agree with the author with the statement that there is a higher level of partner violence of all kinds was was reported but most participants consider some forms of violence to be a normal part of intimate relationships. (Enander & Holmberg, 2008) said that teens who experience domestic violence at an early age are more likely to experience it in their adult age.

2. Did they perform the experiments appropriately? (Repeated a number of times, used correct control groups, used appropriate measurements etc)

- Yes I agree that they performed the experiments appropriately by using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The semi-structured interviews will definitely help them to expand and understand the participants and also whatever they say can contribute to the study of the author.

3. Were there enough experiments to support the one major finding they are claiming?

- Yes. They concluded their finding through the experiments they conducted. For example, they found out that many victims are entering and navigating the complex world of intimate relationships with little awareness, guidance, and understanding and they only base the concept of love through the internet and social media.  

4. Do you see patterns/trends in their data that are problems that were not mentioned?

- No. I don't see any patterns or trends in their data that were not mentioned.

5. Do you agree with the authors’ conclusions from these data? Are they over-generalized or too grand? Or are there other factors that they neglect that could have accounted for their data?

- Yes I do agree with the author's conclusions from these data because the questions were in detail and it contributes to the data that the author needs for his/her research.

6. What further questions do you have? What might you suggest they do next?

- I do not have any further questions but I would like the author to expand more on domestic violence that guys are experiencing than girls.

If you are a teen in an unhealthy relationship, please seek help and tell a trusted adult. Remember we all have a choice in life and no one should ever take that away from us. Love does not hurt, you are worthy and you deserve the best, don’t settle for less.

[imperium-romanum]

Australasian Conferences | 2019

Amphorae XIII – Future Directions

Monash University, 9 to 11 June 2019

We invite all submissions of abstracts for the 13th Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Hellenic or Roman Antiquities and Egyptology (AMPHORAE) to be held at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia from 9-11 June 2019.

The theme for Amphorae XIII is Future Directions. As postgraduate students in ancient world studies, our research represents the leading edge of study in our respective fields. We also live in exciting times, with rapid social and technological changes impacting the way we approach the ancient world. Indeed, change and consideration of the future was undoubtedly a concern for the peoples and cultures of our research.

Amphorae invites you to submit an abstract relevant to the theme of Future Directions to present in June, 2019. 

Abstract guidelines:

Abstract submissions for papers and poster presentations should include the following:

Presenter’s name

Presenter’s university, department and position (postgrad or honours student)

Paper title

Abstract of about 200-300 words, giving a clear idea of what you intend to argue

Type of presentation (paper, brief communication, or poster)

Send all abstracts to: amphorae2019@gmail.com

Please use the abstract cover sheet, provided on the web site.

Information for Presenters:

Presentation Formats

20 minute paper presentation with 10 minutes of discussion

10 minute brief communication with 5 minutes of discussion

Please make every effort to stick to the 20 minute limit so there can be a solid period for questions and comments.

Poster presentation (see below for more details)

Technological facilities: all the standard facilities (data projector, Powerpoint, internet connection, etc) will be available in the presentation rooms. If you have a Powerpoint, please bring it on a USB stick and arrive a few minutes before the start of your session so it can be set up in advance. We also recommend having an easily accessible copy saved online in case your USB is lost or does not work.

Timeslot requests: Unfortunately, due to the expected volume of papers we cannot generally take requests. However, if there is absolutely no possible way for you to make it to the conference on a particular day, please let us know as early as possible and we will see what we can do.

Poster Presentations:

We will be running a poster session during AMPHORAE to provide another option for delegates, particularly honours students, who may not have the time to prepare a full paper. To take part, you will need to put together an A1 or A2 sized poster that displays your research. You will not need to give a formal presentation with your poster, but should be prepared to talk about your research during the session, which will run as a casual get-together. Please indicate on the registration form if you will be presenting a poster, and submit an abstract in accordance with the guidelines above.

To Register:

Information for abstract submissions and conference registration (for non-presenters) can be found on the conference web site.

Submission deadline 31 March

ALIA ASTRA: A History of Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies

An Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies Workshop

Macquarie University, 26 April 2019

While women are conspicuous in number and achievement in Australian history, they remain largely unacknowledged and underrepresented in continuing positions and research fellowships in Australasian Ancient World Studies. The absence of any comprehensive history of Australasian women involved in the study of the ancient world contributes to marginalising the impact of women on the discipline.

This workshop aims to consolidate efforts to collect and work up data towards a history of Australasian women in Ancient World Studies by bringing together everyone who has worked on, or is undertaking, research on women in the field in Australia and New Zealand.

If you are working on the living or past history of women in the discipline please come and share your findings and join us to map out a special journal issue dedicated to a history of women in the discipline in the next two years as well as a five-year strategy for the ongoing effort to collect, archive, and disseminate information on women in the discipline for the future.

The workshop will involve three planning sessions on Friday the 26th of April at Macquarie University in which research already completed or underway will be reported on, desiderata identified, and tasks assigned. The day will culminate in a panel presentation, open to the public, which will discuss the issues involved in developing a history of women in the field.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop and /or contributing to the project, please register here (https://mqedu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3ftDiKr5nFhlC6N). If you cannot attend but have worked in this area, please register to let us know about your efforts.

An additional registration page will be established for the public panel event.

Website: https://socawaws.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/alia-astra-a-history-of-australasian-women-in-ancient-world-studies/

Roman Memory: Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar 33

University of Newcaslte, 10-12 July 2019

The thirty-third meeting of the PacRim Roman Literature Seminar will be held at the University of Newcastle from 10-12 July 2019. The theme for the 2019 conference will be Roman Memory.

We are inviting papers on Roman literature on the subject of memory. This might include: representations of Roman history in subsequent periods, the ways in which Latin authors rewrite earlier Roman literature, the use of the Muses as repositories of cultural memory, commemorations of the dead, the methods by which Roman writers position themselves in the literary tradition, the reception of Latin literature in both antiquity and later eras, the loss and recovery of historical memory, the processes of collective memory, the art of forgetting, and resistance to official efforts to erase memory through damnatio memoriae.

The theme may be interpreted broadly and papers on other topics will also be considered.

Papers should be 30 minutes in length (with fifteen minutes of discussion time). The Pacific Rim Seminar does not run parallel sessions; participants may attend any or all papers. Abstract proposals of 200-300 words should be sent to Marguerite Johnson (marguerite.johnson@newcastle.edu.au) and/or Peter Davis (peter.davis@adelaide.edu.au). Submissions from graduate students and early-career researchers are welcome. Please submit abstracts by 28 February 2019. Earlier submissions are of course welcome.

We expect that conference will be held in a venue in the city of Newcastle. A conference web site will be built in due course.

Submission deadline 28 February 2019

[drst]

Why the quest for purity in media is wrong

So in my life before I became a librarian, I was a university professor. I was that dreaded object of the MRAs - a cultural studies scholar OOGA BOOGA! - and let me tell you those dudes have no fucking idea what “cultural marxism” actually means, because I studied that shit for years.

But I want to talk about the evolution of how we study art, especially stories. I’m going to oversimplify a bit here, so don’t @ me with teeny corrections please.

For decades, centuries even, literature studies looked at works of writing as standalone objects. There might be comparisons between the use of language between some different authors but nothing was looked at in context. Shakespeare’s plays were analyzed to death for language but not as a reflection of life in Elizabethan England. Dickens was a wordy wordsmith but not a signifier of the style and interests of the popular press in Victorian England. The works were not looked at as products of a particular time and place. The history, politics, economics and social world surrounding literature was not what scholars studied. That was irrelevant, only the text mattered.

And of course, only white men were studied. A very open minded professor might include Austen or Woolf in one class just to be contrary. But like history was the Deeds of the Great White Man, literature was the study of Great White Male Writers.

In the early 20th century, as more and more non-white-dude students began to attend universities, they started to push back.  “What about all the black writers?” “Where are the women?” and “How can you talk about Dickens without talking about the economy of Victorian England?” 

Cultural studies theory was born out of this impulse in the mid 20th century. There’s a longer theoretical background to it but one of the simplest explanations is that CS argues we must look at all media - which at the time was expanding dramatically with the recent additions of radio, film and television, entirely new forms that did not work under the model of literature studies since they were created by corporate entities for mass production, not written by a solitary guy in a blazer with elbow patches from the pure spring of his imagination - in the context in which it was created.

(It is the corporate control of media production that brought Marxist thought into media studies, fyi. Instead of stories being written by one person, a company was making them, and Marx’s theories on corporations became relevant to studying media and stories because of that.)

Sure you can write a dissertation on Tolkien’s use of language, but you can also write one about how the author’s experience in WWI influenced the book. nobody blinks at this now, but this was not common practice in English literature departments, and some of those departments rejected the approach so strongly that scholars wanting to take this approach had to go to other departments to do their work. Cultural studies and media studies often ended up being those places.

And of course with the post WWII surge in college enrollments in the US especially, you had more women and POC on campuses asking “where are we in the canon?” “Why aren’t you talking about how racism and sexism impacted these writers?”

There was a literal fight in the scholarly world to crack the Great White Male canon apart and start considering works in context of their creation. There are still spaces in academia that reject cultural studies as valid theoretically. There is a stigma still attached to CS by more traditional (i.e. male and white) voices.

This is why the purity policing infuriates me so much. We literally fought to get more stuff included and to get people to look at works, especially media, in context of their times and places. And y’all are throwing out context and saying “if this text isn’t pure by my standards of right now it should be discarded.” You’re throwing out your own history and past victories in some weird quest to be The Most Woke fan, instead of understanding that EVERYTHING is problematic and always has been. You’re the white male literature professor looking for the perfect text while ignoring everything around the words.

In addition to forgetting that fight for inclusion and broader scope, this is embarrassingly ignorant. The progressive media of today is going to look dated and biased as hell at some point in the future. The assumption that evolved human thought has hit its peak with this generation of fans definitely seems to me to be the arrogance of the young. What are you all going to do when the thing you hold up right now as Pure turns out not to be? What if it’s a thing you really love, or that really impacted you? What will you do when other people demand you discard that influential book or movie or show because it’s not perfect? Will you disown yourself? Just keep discarding everything insufficiently perfect and leaving you alone and miserable with nothing to watch?

The text is only one piece of a larger picture. If that’s all you want to see, well, good luck with your boring life, but don’t demand that I do the same thing. There’s too much history behind looking at texts in context for me to abandon that approach, especially for no reason other than vying to look more progressive than some rando on the internet. If you want to understand the history of how we got here, you need to do more than declare stories pure or unpure. You have to look at the whole picture.

[lligkv]

In a scene early in Susan Choi's novel My Education,* two grad students are talking about a protest against an elderly male professor for the racism in his latest book.

"They were chanting 'Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad!' I evoked, splashing beer as I mimed a hand waving a sign. 'Because, you know, of Conrad's Colonialist Agenda. So we're going to have an emergency meeting to decide if we should boycott his class, or stay and try to subvert it somehow from within."

"Can I ask a really idiotic question?" Dutra said, in a tone that suggested his question would reveal that all idiocy lay elsewhere. "With these people, is that name, Joseph Conrad, supposed to be an insult?"

"Well, yes!--obviously... I don't think they're talking about his writing so much as his politics. And the way his discourse perpetuates the status quo. The inequities in power between whites, who control the discourse, and nonwhites, who are controlled by it--"

"Who cares about his politics?" said Dutra, swinging out of the hammock... "Do you like his books or don't you?"

"Whose?"

"Joseph Conrad's."

Here was a question I hadn't expected. "I've only read Heart of Darkness but...I liked it," I acceded at last...

"Do you like the other guy's books?"

"Whose? My professor's?"

"Exactly."

"I've never read them." Strike three.

Dutra burst out hysterically laughing. "No wonder you're confused!" he exclaimed, in the exaggeratedly bemused, tenderly condescending manner I'd already learned was his method of shifting the mood... "You don't have any empirical evidence..."

It reminded me of something I'd read about a recent controversy in the Romance Writers of America over the novel At Love's Command. accused of glorifying a protagonist who participated in the massacre of Sioux people at Wounded Knee. Specifically, comments by the president of PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, about proportionality: "When the accountability is driven by a firestorm on social media, the notion of proportionality goes out the window because nothing short of a complete repudiation is going to satisfy an audience from afar that's really not immersed in the facts and can't really assess motives. It can mean a default to the most draconian outcome."

The facts of a situation and the motives of an artist being criticized are key ways to distinguish what harm may have been done and what restitution may be necessary. They're not the sum total of the case--but they do sometimes fall by the wayside in these sorts of controversies, at least in the way they're most often covered by outlets like the New York Times. The primary focus is so often trained on the other relevant aspect of these cases, which is the harm that can be done by representations of atrocity and those who are allied with atrocity--which so often isn't quantified as clearly as it could be. (In the case of At Love's Command, for instance, the harm that could be said to have been done is: 1) the book attempts to empathize with someone who participated in a racist atrocity, and 2) it does this in a cultural context in which authors of color are systemically disadvantaged--not given as many opportunities to publish or considered in equal proportion to White peers as having the merit granted their White peers--with representation for their stories reduced as a result, so 3) it should not be celebrated; it's taking an award that could have gone to an author of color, and perhaps should have, given the fact that the award it received was named for Vivian Stephens, a Black woman who cofounded the Romance Writers of America.) Add to this virality--how easy it is to see these conflicts as they emerge and weigh in--and particular facts of a situation and evaluations of potential motives of the participants become even more distant...

I've often thought of the controversies around representation in, say, romance or young adult literature as live looks at a cultural pendulum as it swings--which is something we ought to be patient with. A landscape of what we're willing to endorse and permit is changing, in tectonic ways. We ought to give the new earth some time to settle before we begin to walk it. And many of the onlookers who deride "cancel culture" don't seem to have the patience to understand in good faith why the people who are upset at a book like At Love's Command receiving awards or honors are reacting this way. But the arguable over-the-topness that the complaints can take on when the nature of the harm that's alleged isn't spelled out--and the facts of a situation aren't widely known by all who amplify the complaint, and the motives of an artist aren't always done justice in the complaint--isn't any more helpful... To represent the interiority of a person who commits an atrocity isn't to endorse what that person does; a character's actions or opinions aren't an author's: these are truisms basic to the creation and appreciation of art. And the seeming refusal to acknowledge them in cases like the At Love's Command--so that we can focus on the practical argument about representation and artistic honors and who's getting them that, to my mind, has the most merit--gives the hostile and the ignorant all the ammunition they need to shoot all such complaints down, as "hysteria," before they've even had any impact.

In the meantime, I appreciate the measured response of the author of At Love's Command, Karen Witemeyer, who "said in an email that she did not agree with the group’s decision to rescind the award but said, 'I understand why they felt compelled to take such action, and I harbor no resentment toward them.'" The statement's a bit crisp, and you could read some passive aggression in it. But taking it charitably, Witemeyer seems to grasp what so often falls by the wayside for people injured by accusations they've caused harm, which they cannot understand or bring themselves to agree with: there is a gap between the artist's intention and the art's effect; no artist can be in perfect control of the ways their work will be received, and no artist is immune from the social spirit of the times in which they're producing their work. Sometimes you've just got to accept what happens to that work. All the paratextual stuff--how it's received, how you're thought of as a result--is secondary to it, and much of it is beyond your control.

This is all pretty "basic." But the way these conversations happen online, it's hard to approach anything resembling a first principle. Every so often I want to sit down and figure out something that might interrupt the endless cycle of this same conflict bubbling up and fizzing out before we move to its next instantiation.

A little bit of patience is called for, from everyone involved, and a little bit of grace. And an expansion of the landscape of literature, where outcry over a book like At Love's Command seems to me to encode a belief that this landscape is zero sum--that any depiction of a participant in a racist system will take away literary territory that ought to belong to the victims of that system. Those who participate in atrocious systems, even gleefully, are also part of the human fabric, and it's not always glorifying them to depict their consciousnesses at work, or to celebrate such a depiction for what it reveals about our collective condition. What's more, how much does an award matter anyway? Granted awards say something about what the culture values--but they're snapshots of the values of a moment; for every celebrated text that stays in a "canon," there are tens or more that are discarded... And there are other ways to make a case for literary value than protesting a particular moment it isn't given. Just find more ways to talk about the books you love. As someone who works in publishing, I can say publishers are listening. (Though, you know, grain of salt here: publishing's desires to capitalize on trends are (obviously) cynical; if you want to be taken up by that establishment, you'll likely find it's not what you wanted it to be.) And beyond what publishers or literary establishments do or don't do, the love you have for a book in its moment is really all you've got. No future's guaranteed for any text.

I also think, there has to be some better way of adjudicating this than "give an award" -> "experience outcry by constituents" -> "rescind the honor given." The mechanics of popularity or brand management are at work there, rather than an organization's sincere engagement with the complaint being made, the elaboration of a principled stance for its response and the taking of action according to that stance, or the desire for true resolution or restitution on either side.

*It's somewhat ironic that I'm using My Education as my decorative lead-in for this little post about ethics in artistic representation. The stories of both the male protagonists in that novel--including Dutra--involve unproven allegations of sexual harassment, in a way that probably wouldn't fly in a novel published today as opposed to 2013. I'll admit I was expecting Choi to do more with the accusations than treat them, essentially, as ways to give those characters a bit of spice, a frisson of danger. And a barrier to loving them that only a woman like her protagonist, Regina, is brave enough to surmount.

[thetldrplace]

Academic Capture

This is a somewhat modified transcript of a conversation between Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein on Academic Capture- meaning corrupting influences on science in the modern university.  

The highlights are:

Science in Academia has been captured by the economic incentives at play.

Scientists and their research are responsible large grants which are lucrative to the university. This creates pressure to do only the kind of research that gets large grants, and creates pressures to come up with the conclusions that would keep the money flowing.

The work of the actual research is done by PhD students, who are granted degrees by participating in small areas of each study.

This keeps PhD students from seeing a bigger picture, and incentivizes them to produce what is wanted by the research.

The stature of research scientists in academia, as the 'bread winners' is such that they are often not required to teach or engage in governance, which has had a twofold downstream effect: insulating themselves from students who might ask questions that call out the larger scope, and removes them from governance, with the effect that more non-scientists are calling the political shots of the university.  

So here are the comments. As I mentioned, this isn't a pure transcript, I've cleaned it up in a few places to help readability.

Heather Heying Lots of people are noting that Higher Education isn't what it used to be and is helping to make fragile so many of the people who go through it. In fact, years ago, when the grievance studies papers [1] were being published, we noted that we see the bastardization of post modernism, and those people from the 90's coming around to be faculty and indoctrinating, rather than educating, students, being a big part of what went wrong at Evergreen [2].  Almost all of the big, ridiculous kerfuffles on campuses seem to be about that. But what we said then, and what was harder to convince people of who weren't in the sciences was, there was a different problem within the sciences, and it's about the economic model of how scientists are funded, and institutions are funded by those scientists, therefore providing perverse incentives for those scientists to do big, expensive science. It has rendered scientists... not just people with PhDs in fields that probably shouldn't exist, but many scientists, incapable of doing solid, careful evolutionary thought. Credentialism, people thinking 'that person has a PhD in the science, so they must know what they're talking about', is rising. But too many people, credentialed with these degrees, were never expected to do a complete piece of research from beginning to end: to make an observation, to pose the alternative hypotheses, to figure out how you might address those hypotheses with predictions that are downstream, what the experimental design might be, or to go out and collect the data and analyze it and figure out what it means and reveal it and communicate it in speech and in writing. Many don't experience that to get their PhDs. They walk into someone else's lab, with someone else's funding and someone else's questions already on the table and they do a little tiny piece of the puzzle. Why do we expect people like that to be able to think broadly about the entire scientific process and to walk in and say 'that doesn't make sense'?

Bret Weinstein

When the grievance studies work emerged, we told them 'the problem is you didn't do this with the sciences also. As such, you can't see there is a parallel kind of corruption within the sciences.' The grievance studies stuff is particularly egregious, obvious, and transparently wrong. The problem is that the scientific stuff is cryptically broken. It's not only that people have been awarded degrees for work that doesn't actually make them experts in the way science is done because they've done too small a piece. That's a common problem. But there is also an issue. The same reason people end up doing a small piece of work in order to get their degree is that there is an incredible pressure that has to do with the way the University is paying for its work by effectively by giving people degrees in lieu of money. That's how it makes itself profitable. This creates an incredible pressure to do work that pleases those in position of authority in order to have any hope of getting a job. This creates positive feedbacks where some bit of conventional thought that owns your field is in a position to make sure that only work that emerges is what matches that school of thought and doesn't challenge it. This is anti-scientific. Unless you've seen the effects of that corruption, it's impossible to imagine.  

HH

That truth about how science is funded preceded the rise of the grievance studies and the capture by them of many university administrations. Scientists are the money makers of universities- universities get a substantial overhead percentage of any grants that get brought in, and because of that, academic scientists are given the gift of not having to do some of the work they would have to do. Broadly, there are three things academics are expected to do: research, teaching, and governance; governance meaning everything from sitting on the committee that decides who is going to do the catering for your campus, to admissions, to hiring, to decisions about restructuring departments. IF the research scientists are bringing in the money, administration will minimize what they have to do in the other two camps. Fewer teaching responsibilities means less and less interaction with students, who are actually incredibly useful in terms of giving pushback. Much of student pushback may be naïve, but students can also give more sophisticated pushback because they don't know what questions they aren't supposed to ask.

But also.... by allowing the sciences to excuse themselves from governance, governance skews towards non-scientists and people in fields that aren't making any sense at all. This means the grievance studies nonsense is downstream from scientists being captured by these economic forces.  

BW

We can see the effect of capture within the academy, but it looks very different from places where lobbyists are persuading legislators to do things. Something observable in developing nations is that everyone is so pressed for resources that they are cheap to corrupt. A forester in Madagascar who makes 10k per year is supposed to prevent a corporation from logging tens of millions of dollars from his forest. It's easy to persuade him to forgo the public interest if he can provide a better life for his family. He's susceptible because of his low salary.  

In academia, there is an incredible insecurity because there aren't near enough jobs, so it causes people to be easily corrupted even if they don't understand what they're doing. There's no bribe on the table, but there are other mechanisms.

The corruption of science is partly so destructive because it's so subtle. It's hard to even diagnose. Certain fields will be less susceptible. Astronomy perhaps has a more mundane corruption, whereas things get really bad as you get closer to medicine. The overarching impact of this corruption is to render the science feeble.   When talking about foreign policy, anyone can recognize there is such a thing as war profiteers: people that profit from, and work to push us into, wars because they personally would profit in such a scenario. Everybody knows that even if lives are at stake in wars, there are people whose perverse incentives might cause them to mislead us. Why can't we accept that the same thing is at least plausible with respect to a pandemic? Could there be such a thing as a pandemic profiteer and if so, what are some things that they might have us do, that we shouldn't do?  

We've seen profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry in the past. We have seen advice make its way into the academic literature, and only later reveal that it was harming people. That profiteering could be happening isn't shocking, the question is- how much of an effect IS it having on the public health advice? The public health advice is not making sense in some instances. Why are we vaccinating people that have already had covid?  There isn't a good answer to this and even the CDC's answer doesn’t make sense. Is that ineptitude or corruption? Until we have an answer, the question of 'how bad the rot is' will persist. Whatever forces have us giving a vaccine we don't know enough about to people who it will not benefit, is suspect. Why would we do that?

Notes

[1] The grievance studies papers were a series of papers by Helen Pluckrose, Peter Boghossian, and James Lindsay submitted to academic journals specializing in cultural, queer, fat, race, gender and other study fields focused on grievances against society. They submitted a series of papers meant to highlight that only certain conclusions were allowed. So they wrote papers containing ridiculous or morally questionable means, but arriving at the 'correct' answers. Several were published in the relevant journals.  

They became known as Sokol Squared, after Alan Sokol, who had written a hoax paper in 1996 to the academic journal Social Text, only to reveal later it was nonsense. He did it to expose that densely written, opaque nonsense could pass for academic insight in the post-modernist field as long as it contained the requisite buzzwords.  

[2] Evergreen College in Olympia Washington is where both worked as professors until 2017. Evergreen had for some years held a 'day of absence', where students and staff of color would absent themselves to highlight their contributions to the school. But in 2017, the university changed and told white students to stay off campus. Weinstein refused this and challenged it, and this sparked protests by a subset of the students first demanding his firing, but proceeded to them hunting Weinstein on campus while the school's administrator called campus police to stand down and not interfere with the students.

[scientificphilosopher]

No dude you are wrong. We need to be on the offensive. We need to be agressive. A change in tactics sure, but look at what the most common killer in America. Actually 3 of the most common killers occur from obesity. Food corporations are finding cheaper and more eco destructive ways of making food. Pussyfooting around and telling people everything is going to be okay and love yourself the way you are and don't change when it's in many ways a very real American crisis is absolutely immoral

In philosophy, there are strategies for effective communication (such as the principle of charity and the steel man) that encourage thinkers not only strive to accurately understand the other person’s argument but to even address particularly strong versions of their argument. These are strategies that aim to prevent folks from just talking past one another. Charitable interpretations of arguments can also help with our own critical thinking skills and aid in keeping our biases in check. This is all, of course, assuming that one actually wants to partake in meaningful and fruitful dialogue with others and not just expel self-congratulatory rhetoric into the void. I may be assuming too much here. Regardless, a good starting point for communication is to take some steps to ensure that you’re actually addressing the other person’s argument. Nowhere have I offered up feel-good platitudes like ‘everything is going to be okay’ or ‘just love yourself’ or ‘don’t change.’ Such vapid claims are not helpful because they ignore the uncertainty and vast complexity of the real world. Empty platitudes do a disservice to the nuance that pretty much every issue—if we hope to approach a meaningful understanding of it—actually calls for in this messy world of ours. 

Ignoring complexity can, as an example, lead people to think things like ‘obesity is a killer’ or an ‘epidemic’. Fatness, by itself, very likely does not kill, nor is it a disease that is spreading. People conflate fatness with real killers like heart disease because they think that fatness causes heart attacks. But this is likely false. Obesity might make your risk of heart attack higher, but even then, the literature is surprisingly complex. Nutrition and health science is notoriously young and misunderstood, and this includes the science behind body weight. Again, the complexities of these issues are all too often washed out in favor of sound bites and palatable narratives. But once you dive in, you find that it’s difficult to even effectively define what it means to be overweight. The vast majority of people, according to the highly arbitrary but ubiquitous BMI, are considered overweight or obese. But most people aren’t dying as a result. And, moreover, weight loss is not necessarily linked to lower levels of disease. Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that there are not certain health risks that are strongly correlated with having an extremely high body fat percentage. This is no doubt the case (though correlation does not equal causation). Nor am I saying that it wouldn’t be better for some fat people to pursue weight loss. That is their and their doctor’s prerogative. What I am saying is that it is not fat in itself that is unhealthy. Indeed, some studies show that having 'extra weight’ can actually increase our life expectancy (something known as ‘the obesity paradox’). The whole point here is that it’s possible to be fat and healthy, just as much as it’s possible to be skinny and unhealthy. Except under the most extreme ends of the bell curve, weight by itself is not a good indicator of health. WEIGHT BY ITSELF IS NOT A GOOD INDICATOR OF HEALTH. Far more useful indicators are things like blood pressure and cholesterol. But, again (because I can’t say it enough), you can be fat, even obese, and be healthy, complete with low blood pressure and low cholesterol and all.But if it’s possible to be fat and healthy and skinny and unhealthy, then why are we more worried about fat bodies than we are about high blood pressure and high cholesterol? Why do so many people feel entitled to make judgments about fat bodies instead of focusing on other, more relevant variables? The answer is clear. It’s because our culture hates fat people. We are fat-phobic. Our image-obsessed society has deemed fat as ugly—a visible marker of moral, mental, and physical failure. We spend tens of billions of dollars a year, not on being genuinely happy and healthy but on desperately trying to achieve superficial standards set for us by the rich and famous. Sure, this propaganda is sometimes veiled in health-speak, but we all know what it’s really about: slimming our waistlines and getting that 'beach body’.On top of all this, it’s about damn time that we confront the reality that it is of no help to anyone to shame or police people’s physical appearance. Long-term weight loss has proven to be exceptionally difficult and rare. Indeed, 97 percent of dieters regain everything they lost and then some within three years. 97 percent. Fat people do not, on the whole, get skinny and stay skinny. This does not mean that us fat folk cannot be healthy!! We can eat moderately and exercise and get all of our nutritional and physical needs and still remain fat. What this does mean, though, is that so long as we propagate a culture that teaches us that fat is ugly and wrong and disgusting, then it doesn’t matter how healthy fat people get, we will continue to be ashamed of our bodies and exercise less and experience higher rates of suicide and depression and anxiety. We will continue to be bullied and harassed at increasing rates. Shame and hostility do not help people. They make things far worse. Perpetuating a simplistic and harmful fat-shaming narrative, as if fat people don’t know we’re fat and we need skinny people to keep us in check, doesn’t do anything but continue to hurt people. Frankly, it’s a bit exasperating that I have to say this, but don’t shame people you want to help. Don’t do that. And also realize that your words sometimes unintentionally hurt and shame people, and the impact isn’t erased just because that’s not what you meant to happen. If you’re genuinely concerned about others, then cultivate humility, work hard to figure out ways to effectively communicate, and educate yourself on the complexities. Shame and punishment are practically ineffective and morally wrong strategies for real change. So if we do, in fact, want a healthier society, physically and mentally, then we must foster a more nuanced, kinder approach to body image and fatness. Encouraging reasonable body acceptance isn’t hokey, idealistic, romantic bullshit—it’s a concrete and compassionate strategy for making people happier and healthier. It is, in short, the right thing to do. There’s so much more to address here, but this post is already fat enough. I haven’t mentioned the complexities and impacts of class and poverty on weight, or the broader issue of body-policing that disproportionately impacts women, or people’s vested interest in thin privilege (’I work hard to be thin, I’ve earned this’) that may motivate fear of fatness, the side-lining of fat issues in social justice circles, the pernicious and persistent medicalizing of fat bodies, the naive notion that body weight is merely a matter of choice and willpower… The list goes on. Ultimately, though, we must work to avoid simplistic, culturally-implanted narratives that serve to further marginalize entire groups of folks. We ought to strive to find and implement patient, flexible, and compassionate approaches to the world, ones that make it a better place for more creatures. We will find that shame and aggression typically are not the best ways to go about this.

Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

[paulasanimationba3]

10 Fundamentals of Marketing

This post contains some extensive notes about the fundamentals of marketing from Jeff Della Murra’s book ‘The Marketing Toolkit’. In my proposal, some feedback I had is to look into why advertising companies want to employ experimental animators and also to look into the psychology of advertising. I felt like before I could really start looking into why advertising helps to sell, I wanted to understand why it is such an important part of marketing and how conclusive decisions are reached about what sort of advertising should be used.

To summarise, Della Murra explains in the chapter ‘Ten Fundamentals of Marketing’, that an effective organisation will know precisely what it has set out to achieve and how it will do it. This is done through extensive research into customer segments and competitors, to understand how the organisation can improve and and stand out among others. Beyond that, large emphasis has been put on to ensure the promotion represents the organisation’s goals and work cohesively with the customers’ perceptions of it.

In that sense, advertising should aim to maintain a consistent image of the company and emphasise its core values, to create a sense of trust and security. It goes beyond advertising a certain object, which I mistakenly considered advertising to do.

At the moment, this information is a bit too extensive for what I need to know about advertising, but it should hopefully help me get started with this topic.

It does make me wonder, what kind of audience prefers experimental animation?I potentially may do a study on what kind of ads use experimental animation.

Fundamentals of marketing

1.Only action creates action- understand what marketing is and why you need it

The current Chartered Institute of Marketing definition describes marketing as 'The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably'

The keys are:

Process- manageable and repeatable;

Identifying- knowing not guessing;

Satisfying- not losing on customers;

Profitable- or you'll go to the wall

The marketing process includes 5 actions:

Knowledge-understanding what the market wants;

Alignment-ensuring what you offer is what is wanted;

Promotion- announcing your offering;

Transaction-exchanging your goods and services for customer's money(usually);

Repetition- doing so again and again to build strength in your enterprise.

Marketing is not advertising, though it is something that can be prompted by the marketing process. Nor it is sales or selling, but it does help you understand what to sell, or whom and at what cost. Marketing is a continuous process in which the relationship between and organisation and its customers is- and competitors- is routinely examined and polished. (P.2)

2.Know your business- what it is, how it is, where it is heading.

Successful businesses understand themselves and their trading environment. They use analytical tools to help them make decisions and manage risk.

Begin by asking the following questions:

What is our purpose?

What is our vision?

What is our mission?

Purpose is what you are, vision is what you want to be, and mission is the practical action that will deliver the vision.

Pleasing customers requires that you understand, identify and emphasise the aspect of your service or product which customers value most.

You should identify the market you serve, or intend to serve, and ask yourself how you will compete. A useful tool for revealing how an organisation fits into it's market is the the SWOT analysis. SWOT abbreviates:

Strengths- where and how are we stronger, smarter, better than those we compete against?

Weakness- what do we need to improve? What do we lack?

Opportunities- where are the market gaps that we can exploit, what is in our favour?

Threats- what could topple us, where are we vulnerable?

Strengths and weaknesses are internal matters that can be addressed from within the the organisation. Opportunities and threats are subject to external influences and cannot be directly controlled. When compiling a SWOT analysis it is wise to set a limit for the response points against each heading. Five is usually ample.

When analysing your strengths and weaknesses you can achieve additional clarity by measuring each of your 4 Ps (product, price, promotion, place) or 7 Ps (+ people, process, perception) individually against their own strengths or weaknesses

As part of SWOT analysis, specifically under the heading for threats, you can use a technique known as PEST analysis to enhance your response. List the following words- political, economic, social (and environmental), technological- then analyse how external influences against each heading could have an adverse effect on your organisation. For example, against political you may consider if there are any current or forthcoming legal or cultural issues that could pose a threat. Similarly, against economic you could review how the financial climate could affect you. (P.6)

3.Know your market

Know your market and the components from which it is made. Your market is a dynamic balance between your company, your customer and your competitors. Your marketplace can become competitive but this doesn't necessarily spell disaster. Everything is down to circumstances. Circumstances can change.

market definitions

Market (sector)- defined by industry type; for example automotive sector. It has specialised industry sub-divisions such as trucks, cars, vans and motorbikes. Subdivisions are known as segments. Most organisations are too small to serve an entire sector. Instead, they usually focus on specific segment. The benefit of concentrating on a segment is that buyers within it will share similar characteristics, making it easier to fine- tune your offering to fit the demand.

Niche- a highly specialised fragment of a sector. Rolls Royce motor cars a part of the luxury car niche within the cars segment of the automotive sector.

customers

The more you can learn about your customers the closer you will be to winning and keeping them them. Find out who they are, where they are, what they want and what the will pay.

In learning more about customers you will inevitably discover information about your competitors. Where possible look at where and how they do business. Look at where they could be weaker or stronger than you. Seek and exploit gaps in the way they do things. (P.9) 

4.Know your enemy- customers will have a knowledge of your competitors, so should you.

You can learn a lot about your enemy and about your enemy and business by conducting a comparative analysis. select key features such as product or brand awareness, price service quality, product range or any other relevant attributes and then award yourself and your competitors comparative scores out of 10 under each heading. The results should enable you to take appropriate action aimed at emphasising your strong points and strengthening weaker ones. Similarly you could mount an opinion survey to discover what customers think or what they believe about you and your competition. You can apply the same approach evaluating  the effectiveness of  your sales tools -literature, website, advertisements and so on.

Study how and where your competitors promote themselves. This could give valuable clues as to what type of media brings the best results. However, it can be unwise to advertise in the same spot, if the competitor has more money and can make a greater impression.

The length to with some will go in pursuit of competitor research is a matter for personal morals. A sales manager faked a job-application to gain place on a 2 week residential sales training course run by a major competitor. He then resigned and went back to his own company with a wealth of sales secrets with him.

Mystery shopping is also an option in seeing how the competitor's products or services compare with yours? Do they brag about imminent technical advances? Do their delivery times eclipse yours? How does the customer service experience compare? 

Keep a close watch on competitor websites, the trade press and recruitment pages. These sources will often reveal what competitor firms say about themselves and their future plans. If they are recruiting or looking for new premises it could mean that something big is in the wind. You may not be able to stop it but you could arrange a trade PR event of your own that could perhaps dilute its impact. (P.12) 

When its crossing the line

Talking to rival’s ex-staff may have legal repercussions as you are inducing a breach of confidence, if the former staff member was bound by a contractual confidentiality clause.

Where confidential product development information is concerned there is a fine  legal line between picking up useful information on the grapevine or misappropriation of information by improper means. Generally speaking, if information can be readily found in public domain, it cannot be classed as trade secret.

Appointing a Competitive Intelligence Agency can provide a detailed view of your competition without crossing legal boundaries (P.13)

Knowledge is power- making your market research.

The market research should be Relevant, Reliable and Resounding.

Research falls into one of two categories:

Primary Research- the collection of new information, for example customer interviews or test marketing.

Secondary Research- the use of information already gathered, such as government statistics or general trend analysis. Professionals do the secondary research first.

Research provides two types of information:

Qualitative- orientated towards soft issues, such as impressions or opinions.

Quantitative- is focused on numbers and accountable data. If you want opinions it is best to ask open questions that enable the contributor to respond in their own words. However, this can be difficult to correlate and time-consuming to conduct. The process can be sped up by using closed questions or ‘yes, no, maybe’  options, but these will require the questions to be very precisely posed (P.14)

Common examples of market research include Competitive Analysis and Performance Comparison, whereby an organisation can compare itself against competitors using criteria such as  market targets and share pricing, brand recognition, perceived quality, unit costs and so on.

Consumer Research would seek to establish consumer opinions, needs or preferences, satisfaction, future trends and so forth.

Another variant is Sector Research, in which a the size of a known market segment is analysed to provide a forecast of future sales potential.

When using consumer research techniques such as consumer groups, care must be taken to ensure consumers are genuinely  representative of the actual or desired customer type. Friends and allies seldom provide objective feedback.

There are two crucial decisions that must be made accurately before any form of market research proceeds. Firstly, define exactly what you need to learn and secondly, define the source that will have the information. Once you know what you re looking for it becomes much easier to establish what type of research technique you should use.

There are three questions that will help steer your choice. How much time or money do you have? How accurate do you need it to be? And, where are the potential respondents? (P.15)

When working with an alphabetical sample group start at Z and work backwards. These targets will be less resistant to questions, having been interviewed less often. (P.16)

6. Choosing the right customers-find the best ones, know what they want

Commercial organisations have three possible routes towards competitive advantage:

Option 1- provide high quality at high price to those customers willing to pay premium.

Option 2- reduce the cost (and inevitably the standard) and aim for customers who prefer cheaper deals.

Option 3- hedge your bets and mix options 1 and 2.

Upon Evaluation, Option 3 will make it difficult for you to stand out or to develop a single minded brand personality. With Option 2 you will continuously find yourself fending off competitors willing to match or even beat your price. Worse still, you will be courting the most disloyal customer group of all- those who are driven (anywhere) by price alone. Only Option 1 provides an opportunity to be a sustainable, profitable business position.

The way forward is to segment the market and locate customer group or groups (segments) that most closely match your preferred business model.  (P.18)

Segment is a division of the market in which customers share common characteristics and motivations. For example, an automotive manufacturer might only be interested in customers who want family cars. These customers will think along similar lines. If customers in any given segment will act he same way, it can be assumed they will also respond in a same way when approached with a marketing proposition.

The promotional process is simplified by having a closer understanding of those it is aimed at- and if it becomes simple it will probably also be more efficient.

No two segments can be he same, customer motivation may be unique to each segment. No single marketing solution can work on multiple segments, that’s why businesses tend to focus on a single segment.  (P.18)

To find advantageous segments organisations usually look for common behaviour or attributes such as lifestyle, age, gender or professional interests and so on. Actual, proven personal attitudes are stronger and therefore more reliable as indicators of real segments than, for example, geographic location, which might put a person in a particular place but it will not denote whether a person is, say, a vegetarian or fond of fine wine. Those who comprise the segment must be seen in the way they see themselves and not necessarily as demographic data would define them. (P.19)

7. Pick your destination- weight options and set your own agenda.

Differentiation equates a competitive advantage. Settling for being exactly the same as your competitors it will be exposed to two disadvantages. Firstly, direct competition is both draining and expensive. Secondly, your customers will find difficult to select their preference. Head to head attritional competition is best avoided.

There are four ways in which an organisation can set itself apart:

Price Differentiation- the ideal position is to be more expensive than your competitors, but justifiably so on account of higher value (not price but value) of your offering. Cheaper price would be difficult to maintain and would result in less revenue and diminished price. (P.20)

Focus Differentiation- helps define how your organisation aims to specialise within its field. Is your company approachable by customers? Offer shorter response time, or longer opening times? Do you place particular emphasis to offer a wider selection of related products, or is your preference just to focus on a single high quality product.

Product or Service Differentiation- the market you are in will influence the extent your organisation can distinguish itself. This can be done by looking at notable ways of customising and presenting your product, or adding benefits to enhance its impact on customers.

Customer Service Differentiation-  Consider all the things that help generate customer comfort- guaranteed service times, after sales support, a helpline, free delivery, exemplary service levels, no quibble exchange policy. These are things customers will talk about, so enhancing your reputation becomes part of the gain.

Distribution- How do your customers meet with your offering? Are there notable weaknesses or strengths in your distribution method? Could emerging technology enable you to introduce an innovative point of difference? (P.21)

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)- is the market term used to describe what it is that makes your organisation special or what helps it stand out in a crowded market place. Usually, a USP is related to being better (quality, value, service) than your competitors or else closer (in-touch, attentive) to your customers.

Market Growth can be achieved in four ways. In ascending order of associated risk these are firstly, by Market Penetration, normally by stimulating additional buyer interest. Secondly, Market Development, which aims to extend the sale of existing products into new or parallel markets. The third option is Market Development in which entirely new or complimentary products are introduced into your existing market. Lastly- and carry most risk of all- Diversification, which is concerned with developing new products for untried markets. (P.22)

8.planning for success- forget the plans but don't ignore the planning.

The only plan that will work effectively is one that is objective, systematic and measurable. Most important aspect of a plan is the process you go through to form it. What goes in will dictate what comes out.

List the following headings and work your way through them using this section and the information delivered so far: the organisation; current situation and future objectives; the market you serve; the customer segment you target; market overview; organisational review and SWOT; marketing objectives; marketing strategy; the budget; people; and action checklist.

Define your organisation- write a short executive summary that sets the scene. Summarise your current situation- what’s going on- where are you now? What are your short and long term ambitions? This should be followed by a brief declaration of where you want to be or the position you want to move towards. This is your business or organisational objective and the role of marketing is to support it. (P.23)

Define the Market you are in- do this from your customers’ viewpoint. The market should be defined by what the customers are buying, not what the organisation is selling.

Define the segment you serve- this is classified by the shared characteristics of customers within it. Your aim should be to match your own strengths to their preferences.

Conduct and organisational review-including a SWOT analysis to establish how you fit into your market. What you learn at this stage will help confirm if your outline marketing objectives are appropriate and realistic.  They don’t need to be complex, but they should be specific and measurable e.g. retaining current customers. (P.24)

Before plan can be finalised two elements must be confirmed. First, the budget which ideally should fit the cost of the exercise rather than dictate the extent of it. You should know how much the marketing exercise will cost to implement and how your organisation will benefit. Wise organisations prepare three forecasts- optimistic, realistic and pessimistic. Second, the people. Those who will implement or be affected by the plan must ‘buy’ into it fully. If not, the plan would fail to be effective.

Action Checklist- this should include a summary of what is going to happen and when; who is going to manage each of the component parts; what tools or external services may be required; relevant dates and time-paths and built in monitoring points.

Test your plan if possible, perhaps on a sample group, before deploying it fully. Monitor Progress and Make adjustments as required. Measure and record critical success factors before the plan goes live as it progresses so that you can see and gauge the change. Outcomes should be quantifiable ( P.25)

9.raise your flag- help customers to see you and understand you

Understand your customers. Start by looking at what you achieve for them. Not what the sale does- its effect on their lives. Once you know what your customers really want you will understand what business you are really in.

When you understand the true role of your organisation you can begin forming the messages that will help others to understand and evaluate you. Consider your USP. It can be based on the way your organisation goes about things or experience it provides for customers. (P.26)

Organisations must be apparent if they are to be noticed and patronised. Check your visibility against the following points: Is your name memorable and easy to use? Is it always presented in the same way? If your products or services are sub-branded, do they share common unifying feature? Your premises, your signage, your advertising style, staff behaviour, slogan, website, stationary, packaging etc., should all contribute to the image and the brand message that will help customers identify you.

Perception is reality. Your organisation can create magnetic image that will favourable influence customers simply by sowing seeds of belief. Wise organisations aim to exceed customer expectations. (P.27) they check frequently that self-opinion matches customer opinion and the first step to perfection is identify and rectify imperfections.

10. Shout from the rooftops- the crucial role of marketing communications

Understanding of both the greater market place and of the selected target segment (or segments) should underpin marcoms planning, Reliable market knowledge would increase the likelihood of effective communication, which will in turn enhance your chances of success.

Marketing communications should help you achieve most, if not all, of six key objectives. These are: to influence; to inform; to promote; to remind; to differentiate, and to persuade. Your communications strategy should fulfil your organisational objectives- the big picture stuff behind everything you do; your brand objectives- the values that shape the business; and your marketing objectives- the purpose of communication.

Marketing communications serve your marketing strategy. You should know in advance who will be reached, how they might respond and how you will benefit as a result.

The message should be built around the needs, language and expectations of the receiver- not the agenda, jargon, ambitions and baggage of the sender. Consistency should touch everything. If all that your organisation produces bears consistent look and feel it will convey sense of order and unity, which in turn will suggest that the organisation itself is well ordered and performs in a unified way. This sends a strong signal about calibre. (P.31)

references 

Della Mura, J. (2009). The marketing toolkit. 1st ed. Oxford: How to Books Ltd, pp.2-31.