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wordsnstuff · 4 years ago

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Guide to Writing Fantasy

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How Much World Building?

World building is highly subjective, and at the end of the day, to each is his/her own. However, as with anything, there should be balance. Even the most dense, infamously complicated fantasy worlds are accompanied with characters and conflicts that are just as rich and thoughtful. The amount of world building should be proportional to the amount of development you provide to your characters and plot. Otherwise, you’ve just made up an imaginary kingdom and inserted some of your friends with misspelled names riding horses.

Basing In Reality/History

Almost all fantasy has some basis or inspiration drawn from real historical periods or culture. It’s a good jumping off point, and there’s a lot of room to work with historical periods that we have few or no firsthand record of. If you’re going to take this route, it’s important that you distinguish between taking creative liberties and giving history the middle finger. If you’re basing your fantasy novel in 1300′s Scotland, there’s something to be said for taking the culture, politics, and technological advancements of that time into account. If you’re going to turn around and decide that’s not the era for your story, just base it in Scotland. Basically, the limitations on the elements of your story that is “based in” historical periods lay in your hands. However, if you market your story as “set in 12th century Scotland”, you’d better be writing 12th century Scotland.

Approaching Constructed Language

Conlangs are a popular facet to a lot of popular Fantasy/Science Fiction media, specifically those that are adapted to film and television. Although Science Fiction work is typically more invested in constructed languages, Fantasy has a lot of conlangs in the fashion of semi-developed conlangs that are created solely for the purpose of creating diversity within worlds. Game of Thrones and Lord of The Rings are both prime examples of this, although they have, over time, developed their constructed languages into fully learnable/functional dialects in fan service. If you wish to approach this topic, it’s easy to begin by researching basic linguistics, the anatomy of a language, and drawing inspiration from the commonalities between languages of the cultures that inspire your fictional groups.

Basic World Building Must-Haves

It’s important that when you’re building a world, either from scratch or on the foundation of an existent inspiration, you consider the following elements that make your world three-dimensional and rich:

Politics

Geography

Language

Culture

Expression

Belief Systems

Class

Resources

Values

Power

Creating Magic Systems

This is complicated and nuanced as it gets. When inserting magic into any world, it’s worthy to note how it affects individuals, groups, and large-scale structure. I’ve got more on this in several other posts, so I’ve put my more comprehensive resources here:

Tips on Creating Magic Systems

Putting Limitations On Your Fictional World

Common Struggles

~ Where do I start researching for a story inspired by another culture?... Learn about the culture in depth before taking inspiration. Unfortunately, when most artists “take inspiration” from other cultures, it results in the lazy regurgitation of stereotypes. If you’re going to take inspiration from a culture, especially one that is heavily marginalized by the culture you identify with, come at it from an educated standpoint and work from there. Do not start with a stereotypical version of that culture and then find facts to back up whatever you’ve imagined as you go. Approach it as you would any other topic, with respect and a genuine desire to provide an accurate portrayal in your story.

~ How do I outline a story that spans multiple books?... Simple. Make the conflict more nuanced and difficult to resolve. Game of Thrones, for example, is a relatively simple concept (several families and powerful figures fighting to rule over the seven kingdoms) made complicated and high-stakes by the addition of several critical aspects, such as the relationships between said families/figures, the commentary on several societal issues such as class, the nature of power, and the human cost of the battle for power, and finally, complicating the politics and geography of the world to foster more obstacles for the key players.

~ How do I use world building to develop characters?... All characters are a product of their environment, which includes the geographical consequences, the political climate, and the human trends that result from cultural developments over time. All of these aspects come together to form a vibrant, three-dimensional world in which they explore their conflict. Establishing these factors through revealing the consequences they’ve had for the characters is effective (i.e. Game of Thrones), as is developing the characters through exposing them to the specific experience of living in the world you’ve created (i.e. Harry Potter).

~ How can I avoid harmful cultural appropriation?... Research thoroughly and seek the help of sensitivity readers. People who are specifically qualified to read your work in the search of harmful aspects you may miss are crucial in writing fiction and non-fiction works alike. Start with a good basis of knowledge and background on the subject(s) addressed in your writing, and then get a few outside opinions from people who well and truly know what they’re talking about.

~ How to make fight scenes between magic users exciting and dynamic... Choreograph stage business effectively and make sure that the flashiness of your description has a purpose. People’s movements in fast-paced, high-stakes action are very telling of their personalities, motivations, and a culmination of their idiosyncrasies. Learn this language of non-verbal communication, the language of the body, and use that to send a subtextual message to your readers. These scenes should be character driven, or they’re just filler for the sake of calling your fantasy novel an action/adventure.

Other Resources

Guide To Writing Historical Fiction | Part II

Guide To Political World Building

Resources For Worldbuilding

Where To Start With World Building

Tackling Subplots

Tips on Planning A Series

Creating Diverse Otherworld Characters

Tips on Introducing Political Backstory

World Building In Historical Fiction

Resources For Writing (Global) Period Pieces : High Middle Ages & Renaissance

Resources For Writing (Global) Period Pieces : 1600s

Resources For Writing (Global) Period Pieces : 1700s

Resources For Writing (Global) Period Pieces : 1800s

Resources For Fantasy/Mythology Writers

20 Mistakes To Avoid in Fantasy

How To Make The Journey Interesting

General Tips on Chase Scenes

Tips on Writing Fight Scenes

Tips on Writing Chase Scenes

Guide To Writing Forbidden Love

Finding And Fixing Plot Holes

Ultimate Guide To Symbolism

Tips on Balancing Development

Writing Intense Scenes

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aks3raao1 · 3 years ago

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Me, to Luja: So tell me about yourself

Luja: No

Me: ...ma'am I need to write the story—

Luja: Good luck <3

[now that I do think of it, ALTERNATIVE's main duo that's established right at the beginning is literally a chiller but edgier Katsuki and way worse sUrViVe Nagito genderbends]

~~~~~~

Luja Sen, she/her

Anyways, Luja and Romila are friends from middle school (the story starts with the beginning of their high school at AoS (Academy of the Specialised) which was essentially founded by Nyx). Luja gains her Specialisation (Ferrokinesis: The Ability to bend metal) at the age of twelve, so she has it for a lesser time period than Romila.

Luja primarily wants to become a scientist. Her family is happy with that, because it's praised and everything, especially in our society.

She has a gifted child superiority complex. Being a gifted child + Specialised means that she hardly had many friends in school. Her family had tried to get her to socialize....which didn't go down too well.

She believes that most people are annoying because they waste too much time on useless things like gossiping and what not, which she never showed much interest in and doesn't like to be dragged into those nonsense.

She is friends with Romila since they do share the same taste in stuff and were the only Specialised ones in their class. And they kinda stuck together for most of middle school and went into high school.

She has a problem when it comes to seeing Romila since she tends to see her bad parts and is like, "It's a phase" considering that it's not necessarily affecting her. Romila doesn't get too cranky with her since she fascinates her, with her passion™ for science. Also because she isn't all self sacrifice UwU.

Luja cares for her own self above others (but tends to put Romila pretty close to that hierarchy, which is why she's one of the only two Romila trusts during the Mansion of Death (the other person is Kratanos)) however she also does want to keep what friends she has and is generally caring towards them.

She has a genuine love for science and loves to discover how things work and why, and her favourite facet is Physics. She does want to invent things and honestly just make stuff easier for the Specialised who face a LOT of issues, especially when it comes to amenities since the government is an ass about accomodations and they gained the Fundamental Rights like ten years or so ago in the ALTERNATIVE timeline. And they gain an additional right ("The body won't be harmed for science") when they graduate from school, after signing a contract that they dedicate themselves to helping the government when called upon. (The whole contract is stupid and basically oppresses them more especially the punishment for not abiding by it).

With her goal of becoming a scientist, she wants to use her talents to make accomodations specifically for them so that she could have done something.

The things she fears the most is failure. Failing as in being unable to accomplish her goals. She is afraid of it because it's an unknown variable that's constantly haunted her and she's working hard for it to never reach her.

I suppose there's a way for her to confront that fear during the Mid terms at AoS where she essentially "loses" in the practicals due to her......teamwork issues.

Everyone thinks of her as stuck up and isn't interested to listen to her much and since she views the others as annoying people with annoying habits, she tends to fail to regulate them, causing Romila to win instead (yes, it's THAT unfortunate of a situation) in their match, which causes her to review a LOT of things and she tries to see what caused her to lose after having a severe breakdown.

She develops an inferiority complex in respect to Romila and then spends a long time wondering where she went wrong.

Rena (who somehow clung to her) tries to cheer her up but gets turned back halfway, but she still stays on and Luja is like, "Wtf" until she sees Romila going entirely off the deep end (she presents an interesting contrast to how Koldin sees Romila as well, she sees Romila's behavior and considers it as a justification for her own self....she uses Romila to justify herself a lot (since if you asked Romila, Luja was more or less fine according to her since she wasn't being a doormat and stood up for herself) while Koldin sees Romila as the reason he should cling onto his own stuff) and realises that she could be on the path to destruction herself and accepts Rena's help and tries to be more open to others which leads to the Mid terms parallels in the Archenemy of Society arc where she "succeeds" instead and manages to get the class together enough to escape the situation.

However it doesn't mean that her fear of failure has entirely vanished into the blue, she just reviews the ways she can fail better now and works around it to avoid it and has more confidence in her own self. But she is still scared of failing and would love to avoid that more than anything. However she's chiller after that.

Her intelligence is more or less on par with both Romila and Kratanos, making them the three main strategists in the final battle against the bigots (which is basically a rerun of the Mansion of Death situation but way way worse and fucked up and has different leads to it).

....

The thing is that, no matter what I do, she winds up feeling like one dimensional/repetitive, which is something I am trying to amend about all the characters (I mean, I had to revamp a lot of characters so it will probably take me a long long time to actually get to writing.........sigh besides she stands up like a cardboard amongst people (I mean, you have Romila and Kratanos with extremely complicated storylines and then you have her. Just there))

So the main question is how to make her more interesting as a character and on par with the rest while still keeping her character flaws and personality?

I think the easiest way to go abt this is to view her as a sassy Bakugo. They have the main points in common. They're salty, don't like to socialise, feel inferior to a certain someone while still having some semblance of confidence and a terrible fear of failure

Now as much as I hate to compare your character to another one, it makes it a lot easier to have them become - as my English teacher would say - more. So I am sorry if this comes off as offensive-

For Bakugo, he became interesting by playing a big part in the mc's main story and we do get a few scenes where his vulnerability is shown. I assume it's the same with your character but...what rlly ties the knot for me when it comes to Katsuki is the fact that his problems...are more than just an inferiority/superiority complex. His whole thing stems from background especially (*cough* abusive mom *cough*) and the fact that he's not the main character (or rather that the story isn't being told in his perspective).

These facts make us over think and want more of him. The mystery draws us in which is why I think Luja's character is so perfect for someone in the background. She doesn't like to reveal things abt herself and is pretty dismissive to most things on top of that (plainly just salty). Her character rlly draws you in and the best way to portray those kinds of characters is through another character. Ofc, you'd have to get to their POV eventually but it's important to note that most of the details should come from someone else's POV (an observer, if you will) instead of info dumping and starting straight with hers. A character that's mysterious with a very simple yet relatable story attracts a LOT more attention and interest when seen from someone else's perspective than when you kickstart it from theirs.

Ofc, if u are planning (or already have) started the story from her POV, that would be a bit problematic in terms of interest. But not a train wreck. This is where my other point comes in. The point of making a character have more than one problem

Different ppl as well as characters have a main problem but also different ones, no matter what way you look at it. It seems that even you are confused with all ur character's ins and outs (dw, we've all been there... I am still there tbh) and a solution to that is backtracking a bit and looking at their life from the very beginning in HEAVY detail (like more than u already did). Think abt what other trauma could have been caused, what doubts and fears could have slowly crept it's way to her heart and head (I am a sucker for long-lasting doubts that develop over time) and anything you can even so much as GRASP on. If you look at it and see it as a possibility, try to fit that into her character and add it subtly in different places (as subtext or a creative pattern, wordplay, doesn't rlly matter as long as it's not openly stated bc, remember, the key thing to these types of characters is mystery).

For example, a fear of failure can stem into anxiety before the character has even lost smth later in their life. They probably get rlly anxious when evaluating smth but don't show it much or at all so no one notices. This adds even MORE to the character bc you can build it up after other events. Like once they have failed, they could probably get even more anxious and then develop a bad relationship with the person who beat them (double the points if it was a friend). You could build all that up and turn it super toxic instead of jumping right to the healing. It makes it more interesting, doesn't it? Plus, reevaluating almost everything including world views after 1 loss is...kind of hard to believe even with anxiety (no offense)

Adding a lot of little problems and thinking abt how Luja's behaviour can impact other characters helps a terrible lot if ur doing most of the story from her POV. Especially since she's probably the most relatable character (from what I've heard anyway). I have a certain saying... it goes like, "It's better to have a relatable and connecting character than one with a problem that is too big for normal people to fathom."

I like characters with heart-wrenching problems that I would never be able to relate to (take maybe Shigaraki as an example ig?) But my favourite are the ones that make me feel as tho I made a real connection

Also, I would like to say...if ur looking to progress her character even further, I would debate on whether it's the complete end to the novel or if there'll be a second part. If it's a second part, keep some of Luja's issues. Make her get better but not completely "YAY, I AM DONE BEING TORMENTED". If it's the end of the novel/series/etc., make it so that she's resolved most of most of her issues. They don't have to be completely gone but they have to be a lot better compared to how they started. And how i would work that out is a mind map but knowing ur a scatterbrain...lets talk it out where everything is all over the place

Luja's main thing is to gain confidence in herself and be finally ok with losing, right? If you ask me, that's a tough one but not impossible. I think to get her from point A to point B is to put up a bunch of events like:

Get her super anxious when doing smth

Lose to *insert person*

Have a breakdown and over think on what she could have done better (on the project or whatever she lost at)

Get even more anxious and totally mess up the next thing

Lose once again (double points if it's the same person as last time)

Overthinking abt how she's not good enough

F i g h t i n g f r i e n d s c o z d r a m a

"YoU'rE nEvEr GoNnA gEt BeTtEr If YoU kEeP tHiNkInG aBoUt YoUrSeLf"

Over think abt no. 8 bc out of options and ideas and ✨a n x i e t y✨

Try listening to others more and become b e t t e r

Win smth (bc creator forbid 3 losses in a row to start depression)

Lose again (there is gonna be a bit of back and forth but is necessary for development)

"I tHoUgHt I wAs FiNaLlY dOiNg SoMeThInG rIgHt AnD nOw LoOk"

"Losing is not th3 3nd of th3 fucking world, you lunatic"

"WELL, IT IS TO ME, BITCH"

*insert psychology somehow idk*

Another loss

"I'm angry...but I'm ok"

Note that idk where bullying would come in and these are only how I would think it to go-

A character like this isn't rlly my strong suit when it comes to them resolving their problems but they are fun to write and think abt-

................................did I just give you advice on how to traumatize? I-

#writing #writing advice #wow i rlly am a sadist #character analysis #KK's character #well shit wtf did i go on abt-

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alliterative-albatross · 4 years ago

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So, I sent you (@disgruntledspacedad) a pretty long ask a while ago (back when you had anon on) and I'm decently sure Tumblr ate it (or maybe you ignored it, in which case, feel free to ignore this one as well). But then I saw one of those "writers appreciate feedback no matter how long" posts, so I'm back here. Here is my mediocre attempt to rewrite my original review of your work. Bear in mind that English is not my first language, so if at any point my phrasing sounds weird to you, you know why. Mandatory disclaimer/apology: this might get a little too long 😅

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

I remember being SO mad at myself for not finding this sooner. I binge read it one afternoon with no thoughts for any real life responsibilities I might have had (and no regrets). Javiears is one hell of an unconventional relationship in the beginning, and I really love what you did with them. The whole premise of your story is quite refreshing, and you somehow manage to convey the trust and mutual respect there two feel for one another without explicitly showing us the beginning of their "entanglement".

Also, fuck you for what you did to poor Emilio, that man was a saint and he deserved better! I honestly can't believe that I got so attached to a character that appeared so little in the story, but it happened, and his death kind of broke my heart.

But the Javiears reunion + mild confession was lovely, and felt completely deserved. And of course the sex scene. I won't lie, I expected a bit better from Javi there, but I did like how utterly /human/ it was. Capturing that humanity, the imperfections in each character is something you're really good at (more on that later).

AFTERSHOCKS

Ah, my emotionally constipated babies who really need to work out their communication issues. I do love them, though. And this short series did a really good job of delving a bit deeper into Ears's and Javi's psyche. Kudos to you for dealing with the medical "aftershocks" of living through an explosion AND using that experience to move your emotional plot forward. These two need to grow a lot before they can get to a stable point in their relationship, and you really manage to convey their insecurity and fear of commitment/intimacy while making it clear that they're in it for the long run and that theirs is a relationship that WILL work out so help them God.

IF I FALL

Ouch. Punch me in the gut while you're at it, why don't you?

But seriously, "If I Fall" is SO FUCKING GOOD. Don't get me wrong, it's angstier than an image of Jesus on the cross (don't judge me, it's Holy Week and I just got home from accompanying my grandma to church), but it somehow works beautifully. You, my dear, play heartstrings like they're a fucking guitar and I AM HERE FOR IT.

You're doing an amazing job at making me feel everything these characters are feeling, which is both awful (bc pain) and impressive.

Also, if anything happens to Ana I will cry, because she is adorable and wonderful and has suffered way too much already and really deserves a break and some cookies.

Also also, if anything happens to Ears I will cry, because she is badass and wonderful and has suffered way too much already and really deserves a break and some cookies.

Also also also, if anything happens to Javi I will cry, because he is loving and wonderful and has suffered way too much already and really deserves a break and some cookies.

Basically, I am really invested in the well-being of these characters and can't wait until they're happy and safe again (please tell me they will be, my heart can't handle much more pain).

A quick note on the angst complaints: yes, this story is way angstier than most other fics out there and it can be a bit too much at times, especially considering how many chapters of pain it's been. BUT it's obvious that "If I Fall" NEEDS this amount of angst to get where it's going, to send the message it wants to and to properly develop its characters. The pain is as important to this story as flour is to bread. You may not like eating flour on its own (I don't think anyone does), but you love bread (because bread is amazing) and you must recognize that bread NEEDS flour to work. It wouldn't be bread otherwise. And eating the flour as part of the bread even makes you like the flour because the bread is just DELICIOUS.

I fully understand and sympathize with the people who have elected to table "If I Fall" until it's completed so they can binge read it knowing there's a happy ending in sight, but in case you're feeling a bit self conscious about all the angst, please know that your story is beautiful not in spite of the pain, but rather /because of it/.

PS: No, I'm not high/drunk, I just really like bread

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Silly thing to comment on, I know, but I do feel like it's important that you know how useful your ANs have been. There are many details in the story that I simply wouldn't fully get without reading your comments at the end of each chapter, and I appreciate your writing a hell of a lot more knowing how deeply you understand and care for each one of your characters. Plus, it is obvious how much work you've put into researching a country and a time period that are (from what I gather) unfamiliar to you, and I really do believe you've done an amazing job of it.

JAVIER PEÑA

My boy. I love your characterization of this complicated character, and I have eagerly read each and every one of your headcanons about him. I can't really say if your version is fully faithful to the source material because it's been a while since I saw Narcos, but your Javi most definitely reads like a real person. He's fairly consistent as a character, and I feel like everything he does is perfectly natural for him to do as a character. He makes for an unconventional yet deeply interesting romantic lead, and so far I have thoroughly enjoyed all his POV chapters/scenes.

OCs

I know you've gotten some flack for making her into an OC halfway into the story, and while I get why the sudden change may have felt like a disappointment for some, I don't share that sentiment. I firmly believe that this fandom is unfairly harsh towards Original Characters and their creators, and I don't really understand why. Listen, I love Reader fics, and consume many Reader fics. I have read dozens, maybe even hundreds, and I can safely say that I've only ever "inserted" myself in approximately 10% of those stories. Reader characters are not as blank as their writers may want them to be. They can't be. They're characters, and character have personalities and moral values and senses of humor and a bunch of other things. Reader characters may not have a backstory or a physical description attached (and even that's not guaranteed), but they're still characters.

And on a more personal note, pretending they're actual blank slates is naive at best and insensitive at worst. Reader characters are American coded 99% of the time, and white coded 95% of the time. Not every readers is white nor American, even if that's the predominant demographic on Tumblr. When I read a JavixReader fic about a woman who speaks exactly zero Spanish, I know she's not me. The story may be beautifully written and have an amazing plot and character development, but the Reader *isn't me*. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and some of my favorite xReader stories feature a "reader" who couldn't be more different from me, but it's something that enemies of OC fics should take into account. Particularly if they are white and/or American. But I digress.

HANNAH AARONS

Your character is amazing. She's strong, smart, confident, independent and an all-around badass. She gets kidnapped while pregnant and still focuses on problem solving and survival. But she's also overly guarded and mistrustful, and really needs to work on her communication skills. There are times when I absolutely love her and even admire her, and other times when I want to whack her with a slipper. She's no Mary Sue, but remains interesting and likeable throughout the story. She feels wholly human and real, and that's no easy task. I like her, I am invested in her, and I can't wait to see what's next for her. She's a compelling and three dimensional protagonist in a complex story who never fails to draw me in. I love her. She's your baby, and you should be proud of her.

Also, quick question about personality types: I know you've typed Javi as ESFP and Ears as ENTP (100% agree on both, btw), but have you given any thought to their enneagram types? I personally have always seen Ears as being somewhere on the thinking triad, maybe a 7 or even a 6w7, but I'm not too sure about Javi. 9w8 maybe? He could also be a 6w5 🤔

PARTING THOUGHTS

Basically, I love your story, your characters and your writing in general. You are a fantastic storyteller and wordsmith. You get into the heads of incredibly different characters personality-wise (Ears, Javi, Berna...) and manage to capture all of their complexities and quirks every single time. And it doesn't feel like it's something innate for you either. To me, it seems that you have put a lot of work and effort into understanding each and every one of your characters, who they are, why they do what they do and what they want. And let me tell you, all that effort has been more than worth it. "Better Love" is a fanfic, but it wouldn't be out of place in a regular bookstore, if I'm honest. I don't know what you do for a living or if you've ever considered writing professionally, but you clearly have the skills and the drive to create some masterpieces.

You are amazing and your writing is a gift. Thank you for sharing it with us, and have a nice day! ~ 🍪

My friend, I apologize for hoarding your first ask. I’ve been sitting on it because I’m not gonna lie, I enjoy going back and rereading it. It gave me a lot of comfort when I was in a pretty dark place, both personally and in regards to my writing, and I was reluctant to send it out into the the abyss of Tumblr where I might never see it again.

That’s not fair, though. You put just as much effort into sending me that review as I put into my writing, and I apologize for never responding to you.

Okay, anyway, so twice now, you’ve made me cry. In a good way, I promise!

I absolutely love your bread/flour metaphor. It made perfect sense. I want the emotional release of Javi and Hannah’s reunion to be earned, and in order to do that, the angst has to come first (there are also a few plot “ingredients” that have yet to make their appearances). Thank you very much for understanding that, and for voicing it so eloquently.

I appreciate your comments on my research and characterization. You’re correct that I’ve put a lot of time and effort into crafting a universe. In a lot of ways, I’m doing my best to stay true to the source material (regarding culture and timelines in particular), and in others, I’m branching into my own territory.

On that note, I’ve never once regretted fully embracing Hannah Aarons’ identity as an OC. She’s stayed consistent in my mind from the beginning, and it was a relief to finally share my vision of her with the audience. And for the record, I totally agree with you regarding “reader” characters. Every reader insert echoes the perspective of their author, no matter how vague the physical description. I can only imagine how grating that must be from the perspective of a non-white, non-american reader. Thank you so much for sharing your insight! I will certainly keep it in mind the next time I write a “reader insert” fic.

Okay, enneagrams! I am much less familiar with enneagram than I am MBTI, but I agree 110% that Javi is a 9 with a strong 8 wing. I waffled back and forth on Ears a little, but eventually landed on 8w7 for her. It came down to the eight’s deepest fear, which is being controlled. That’s Ears all over, and the fact that she and Javi share that eight willfulness means that they might butt heads a little, which also seems very appropriate for them. Big thanks to @remusstark for her insight into the eight frame of mind - our conversations helped solidify my decision on this. :)

Anyway, I’m just rambling now. The big take-away point that I want you to get is that I am so, so grateful to you, both for your insightful feedback and your dedication in making sure that I actually saw it. You are an absolute gem and a deep thinker, Cookie-Anon, and if you ever feel like sliding into my DM’s, I’d welcome the opportunity to get to know you better.

Mad love and soft hugs,

~ Jay

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koshofthevorlons · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on Adrien: Surprisingly Three-Dimensional

Adrien is a complicated character. He’s one who I will admit I have strongly mixed feelings on. He possesses more than a tinge of being a Gary Stu – especially given how Astruc views him as ‘perfect.’ He’s famous, an accomplished fencer, good at the piano, can speak multiple languages, skilled at sports, and more. Everyone in-universe either likes him, or in the case of Felix, is jealous of him. Despite supposedly being heavily sheltered and naive about how the world works, he delivers moral lessons to the protagonist. The background narrative goes out of its way to consistently try to make viewers feel sorry for him and excuse any mistakes he makes.

The series ignores his faults. Going as far as to have the writers’ tweets make it sound as if Chat Noir is an alternate character when they talk about Chat’s flaws. Paradoxically this very writing has created a potentially interesting character via Adrien’s character faults versus his actual good traits. When the narrative is not focused on it, his best traits shine through both as Adrien and Chat. From a character growth standpoint, Adrien has an immense amount of potential as character.

As Adrien, he is a rich white boy who has grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has never wanted for anything at least in the material sense. Money issues have never been an issue for the Agreste family. Until his mother disappeared, he had happy childhood with a loving family. He’s already rich and famous despite still being a teen. Adrien is consistently popular with his fellow teens whenever he interacts with them be it in school, on the job, or at fencing class. He is a bright young man – and he knows it too. His good grades are a requirement for him to be able to get out of the house.

All in all, it seems like a bright life. Except his childhood is spent in a golden cage. A comfortable cage but a cage none the less. He was homeschooled until he finally managed to go to school at the start of the series. Even before Emilie’s disappearance, his social environment was unhealthy. His only interaction with other children was either through his modeling career, fans, fencing class, or the children of his parent’s social peers. Given his general attitude as Chat, his academic achievements are likely the result of his parents expecting a 100% success from their son. Like Chloé, the only real adult authority figures in his life seems to be parents. Adrien might respect Nathalie, but he doesn’t really treat her as an authority figure. Adrien’s fate would have likely followed that of many child stars if things had continued.

Despite this he’s happy and content. Then his mother disappears, and everything goes to hell. Gabriel withdraws into himself, either becoming emotionally abusive or it being more overt. Adrien is forcibly confronted by the prison-like nature of his environment. Cue the events at the start of the series with Adrien trying to get out of it.

Now why is all this rambling important? It lays the groundwork for explaining Adrien’s potential character: warts, sugar, and all. First off, as both Adrien and more noticeably Chat Noir, he possesses serious entitlement issues. It is most obvious in how he treats Ladybug, but it shows in his civilian life as well. He treats his feelings and wants as more important than other people: an example being how he acts when the class is celebrating when Chloé, a girl who had spent literal years tormenting her classmates, is seemly leaving. He also seems to possess either a superiority/inferiority complex or control issues due to his shitty home environment which every so often makes him act like he is better or knows more than other characters. An example of this Reflecdoll and how he tries to mansplaining how Ladybug’s powers works to her – once again forcing Marinette to carry his ass while also doing the duties of Lady Noire.

Most negatively is how his sense of entitlement has led him to harassing Ladybug. And it is harassment: Marinette has asked him repeatedly over multiple episodes to stop and told him she is not interested in him as Chat Noir. She has shown she is not comfortable when he tries to act romantic. There is a clear difference in how she acts when uncomfortable with his actions versus when the two acts as friends. Some people excuse Adrien’s behavior as him not knowing better, but I personally have a hard time not seeing him getting at least some anti-harassment training given his gig as a model. Plus, given the difference between how he acts as Chat versus Adrien suggests he has at least some clue he would face blow-back acting like he does.

Yet, it cannot be forgotten why Adrien was chosen to be Chat Noir in the first place. When pushes comes to shove, Adrien barring Syren has repeatedly shown his heart is in the right place. In Ladybug despite how uncomfortable it made him; Adrien made a deal with Lila to help Marinette. There are scenes of him helping former akuma victims in the background of episodes. When given a opportunity to discover Ladybug’s identity in the Miracle Queen, he instead did the right thing.

Adrien is at his core a flawed character. He is willing to help others but focused on his own wants. His is potentially a great hero if he can grow past his faults. The show repeatedly shows us his potential to be a good person. Both sides of the character are part of what makes Adrien who he is.

#miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #chat noir #adrien salt #chat noir salt #adrien sugar #chat sugar #ml worldbuilding fanon #character growth #my thoughts #tw: harrasment #source: koshofthevorlons

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thehollowprince · 5 years ago

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The Mountain of Ghosts

Another week, another episode. This one dealt with a topic that I know has been on the fandom's mind since the end of season four, so let's just dive into this.

Alice and Eliot - obviously the big part of the episode. This has been on everyone's mind since season one and the possibility of Queliot was a thing. It's been a constant back and forth, one or the other, situation since, and sadly, we all know where most of the fandom landed on that issue. This was a good episode that got to the crux of the issue here, that being Quentin. Not Alice's or Eliot's feelings toward Quentin but rather his feelings toward them.

For years I've stood here and watched the constant screeching of "Quentin loved Eliot more!" or more rarely, (seriously, very rarely), "Quentin loved Alice more!" It got to the point where I firmly believed, and still believe, that it wasn't a matter of actually caring about Quentin at all. I'm not saying that no one actually liked Q, but that was secondary to the main issue of which ship would win in the end. Shipping is a big thing in fandom, but what no one really ever wants to admit is that it's also a big problem in fandom, in that ship wars happen and all some people seem to care about is the validation that comes with watching their ship set sail or another ship sink. That's all I'm going to say about that right now, because honestly the problem with shipping in fandom is a whole other topic waiting to be made, but its relevant to this issue, so let's move on.

Alice and Eliot both loved Quentin, and whether anyone wants to admit it or not, he loved both of them back. It isn't a matter of saying he loved either one of them more, or which one was more valid because no one loves two different people in the same way. Some of the things that Quentin loved about Alice aren't the same things he would have loved about Eliot. And this episode really highlighted that. Eliot and Alice are about as different as you can get, especially when it comes to romance. They both had different approaches to their relationship with Q, and I'm so glad we got to see them resolve their differences. We finally got to see Eliot say to someone else that he and Q loved each other, and have Alice not only acknowledge it but embrace it. She said it best, "what was I going to do? Demand he be less complicated? That he only love one person?" Too often Alice is reduced to this one-dimensional girl who is only defined by her relationship with Quentin, especially by fandom, and this really broke that mold. This was a nice episode for the two of them, to work through their anger and to work together to let go of Quentin... to acknowledge that they couldn't save him. I hope this bond between the two of them keeps building through the rest of the season.

PS: please let Alice wear jeans and pants more often. She looked so much more comfortable than she does in those fetish school girl dresses.

Moving on...

Margo - I'm not sure how I feel about this whole "reclaiming the throne" thing she's got going on. I loved Margo winning the throne by her own merit back in season three, because it worked in that moment. And then last year we had her abandon the throne to save Eliot. When push came to shove, she valued one person over the duty she had as a king to her people. I'm not faulting her for that, because I understand where she was coming from, but she still gave up the throne and it paved the way for Fen to assume the throne.

I can only speak for me, but I thought that was beautiful. Having a Fillorian finally sit on the throne of Fillory felt like a major milestone, and now we're just supposed to believe that Margo gets to be the king because she said so? I didn't like that. That's one of Margo's negative character traits, her entitlement, which brings us to...

Fen - I do not like what they're doing with her so far this season. Who is the sycophantic woman? She admired Margo, of course, but not to the extent of idol worship. This is a woman who was part of the F.U. Fighters, fighting for Fillorian rights in a kingdom always ruled by outsiders. But then the moment Margo's not there, she turns into this incompetent moron, so much so that she and Josh were overthrown because they were waiting for someone else to save them, and I don't like that. That is a complete disservice to the character and the journey she's been on for the previous three seasons.

Also, this whole Josh thing that's going to come between these two women, who have had such respect for each other, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I was one of those (probably the only) who was rooting for Josh and Margo. Were there things I would have changed about it? Of course, but I thought they worked well together and off of one another, and now we have this bullshit. I liked Josh, not just because we shared the same name, but because he was an interesting character that people, especially women, seemed to like, not because of his appearance but because of his personality. And now they've turned him into a quintessential Nice Guy™ who sleeps with his girlfriend's friend instead of figuring out a way to save themselves and Fillory.

I will say that it'll be interesting to see how Fen and Margo repair their friendship after that revelation that Margo legitimately tried to kill her, if they repair it at all.

As for everyone else...

Julia - I know we're working up to something with her and the big catastrophe, so I'm gonna let her lack of a role these past two episodes aside from support slide.

Penny - I really would like to see more of Professor Adoyodi, aside from just him doing research for class. Also, it's sad that they had him mention that "best case scenario for Travelers" is that they just become an Uber for their friends, only to have Julia ask him for a lift...

Like, y'all wrote it, maybe you should pay more attention to it!

And then there's Kady and Fogg. The Magicians is so different then other ensemble shows in that they actually use the ensemble! That being said, characters like Fogg and Kady often end up on the side because, while they're deemed primary characters, they feel more like secondary or tertiary ones. I know I'm not the only one interested in what's going on with the Hedge Witches, but we don't see Kady and what's going on with them unless one of the other "mains" needs something, usually some secret Hedge spell or Kady's fist. Same with Fogg. Brakebills was such a cornerstone for this show, and while the mains left the school (didn't graduate, just left) the institution plays a major role still, as a location if nothing else. Add to that the fact that Penny is a professor there now, and I'd espect to see more of it.

Lastly... the Dark King.

Not to toot my horn or anything, but I'm pretty damn good at predicting turns and plot twists. I can usually spot a villain or antagonist the moment I see them, but that wasn't the case here. Granted, in hindsight I should have seen in with how he was introduced, but I was so stuck on the idea that I "knew" who the Dark King was that I couldn't entertain the possibility that I would be wrong. Though, to be fair, he did have a line about illusion magic, so there's a chance I might still be right. All of that being said, it did feel a little like a cop out. All of our other villains and antagonists have been hinted long before their big reveal, and just having a completely new character shown up and go "Surprise, bitch! I'm the dark king" feels a little off to me. We'll just have to wait and see.

All in all, I'd give this episode a rating of 7.5 out of 10. I know I complained a lot, and that's because, aside from Eliot and Alice's arc, the rest of the episode felt kind of lackluster to me. Here's hoping we pick up the pace the rest of the season.

#josh watches the magicians #the magicians meta #the magicians #spoilers #s5e3: the mountain of ghosts

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zeravmeta · 5 years ago

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Give me your absolute best YGO x Fate headcanons

Ah gee since ya asked so nicely heres my convoluted crossover AU. Also this got hella long so I'll add a readmore

-the protags would all wind up at Chaldea due to being summoned by the godly powers within their own universes (Egyptian Gods, Crimson Dragon, etc.) and are tasked with helping them. Yugi is pre Ceremonial Duel (for Atem), the rest are from post series

-Gudas just so used to all the weirdness surrounding them so they take it in stride. Holmes on the other hand is losing it because he fears they may have been some type of dimensional collapse. He freaks out further when some of the kids say "oh yeah that happens all the time". Da Vinci sets them up to assist Guda since they can use magic (at least half of them use magic and the other half literally fuse with duel monsters) without needing magic circuits (which interests her GREATLY) so she introduces them as a set of new masters to help.

-their decks are still with them but now instead of being confined to the game they can actually summon them as Familiars/Phantasmals, though they can only support a few at a time.

-most, if not all servants are suspicious of these new masters (guda is my favorite master i dont need another one), but its only initial waryness since these are actual kids like Guda and they default to Parent Mode. Theyre even more surprised to learn about the exploits within their own worlds.

Now onto some of the dynamics:

-Yugi would just be happy to meet all these heroes from history. He understands the seriousness of the situation and despite his initial kickback he'd be onboard to help. Atem would take this opportunity to ask around to see if any of these ancient heroes would know him (since pre ceremonial duel he'd know who he is from Mem World). The Pharaohs (Ozy, Nito, Cleo) would be surprised about a Pharoah they've never met before, and especially his divinity since he could summon three Egyptian Gods to aid him. He was from 3000 years in the past so Egypt was beginning in its decline, so such a modern (relatively) Pharoah holding such power would shock them, though in the end Ozymandias would still declare him one of his friends and theyd get along. Yugi would leave the Puzzle with the Pharoahs so they could speak while he went around meeting a bunch of the heroes. He'd love to play with some of the kids though he has earned his fair share of ire since the King of Games never loses on Game Night, Poker Night, or any other type of games. Yugi has more supportive abilities in his skillset for the ourposes of battle, while Atem can more freely use his shadow magic since he's being supplied.

-Judai is more nonplussed than anything. He was already wandering the world so for him this is just another checkpoint. He finds the ability to summon his monsters as familiars more convebiant than anything since he could already speak to them. Many of the magic users are particularly interested in his ability to talk to spirits since its a rare ability in general and usually limited to one type of phantasmal, not to mention empathetic abilities on their own are somewhat unheard of in Nasuverse. Yubel is a protective force around him and for combat training scenarios shes extremely hard to get around since her deflection ability, while hard to maintain when Yubel uses her final form, is pretty much on par with Lord Camelot in terms of defense. He's generally friendly but comes off as rude sometimes due to his general nonchalance. Gets along especially well with some of the more volatile servants like Berserkers and Avengers since his empathetic abilities are soothing to them.

-Yusei is cautious and guarded here. He has responsibilities in his own world he'd want to get back too, but doesn't have it in him to just leave. His D-Wheel somehow came along (Yuya shivers in the distance) with him, so Da Vinci did the only reasonable thing upon seeing a miniature perpetual motion machine and tried to impound it immediately for study. Yusei was happy to share his info and skills on Momentum and implementing it into Chaldeas energy systems, something that had Tesla and Edison proud since one so young was already (but only barely) supassing AC and DC. Holmes was also extremely interested in Clear Mind and the Crimson Dragin, since Yusei managed to consolidate his own concentration into pure evolutionary energy and may have accidentally interacted with an elder god in the process (kinda like Holmes). Yusei assures him the Crimson Dragon isn't evil and that its called Quetzalcoatl, which has Fate Quetz coming in and asking about herself, further complicating Yusei's confusion on the Crimson Dragon. For combat, he starts off supportive by swarming his field with low power monsters before suddenly summoning a more powerful one. With Over Top Clear Mind they become even more powerful and evolve on their own, so Stardust can become Shooting, but summoning Quasar is very dangerous since its extremely powerful but taxxing.

-Yuma is absolutely excited. Astral not so much. "Astral these are literal HEROES how can you not be excited!?" "Idk probably the part where they'll kill us if we take a wrong step?". Yuma loves to hang around servants like Drake, Shiki and Beowulf, and loves swapping stories of their adventures. Abigail heard about aliens and wonders if Yog Soghoth is an alien, but Yuma tells her that the Astrals and Barians are not like Yog Soggoth, even if Don Thousand as described kinda sounds like him. Astral can be seen since since Heroic Spirits are consolidations of magic while Astral was basically an energy being of the same type, and does float through the halls, occasionally scaring someone by mistake. He does get along with a mysterious woman in a kimono who seems to appear in the twilight hours, but he cant ever really remember her face. In combat Astral and Yuma can do their usual combination form which causes their Numbers to automatically Rank Up upon summoning, the higher the form the further they can rank.

-Yuya has it a bit rough at first. He just got out of a war and now he was being dragged into another? Thankfully he gets his bearings quickly but is still somewhat shaken. Some of the servants are wary around him because they can feel the distortion that exists within his soul, his three other versions, and the power that could trun him into the Supreme King once again still exists there even if Zarc has passed on. He gets along with Siegfried well enough, and they swap stories about how the expectations of others can lead you to ruin. The Alter Egos feel a kinship to him since he's also a consolidated personality rather than a full person, though he gets along best with the Celts. Cu, Scathach and Fergus all love to see his performances, but to them that just meant that they can put him through warrior training especially after they hear about the war he went through. Scathach insists that him running for his life while she chases is good training, while Cu agrees while running alongside him. In battle he uses his acrobatic prowess enhanced with a little bit of fortification/protection magic, and can summon all four of his dragons to help him. Since the other Yu Boys are stuck within Yuya, they occasionally trade places:

Yuto gets along with Archer and occasionally helps him out. Archer is sympathetic to the struggles he unerwent in his own world and makes sure to keep his spirits up while also trying to ignore the irony.Yugo and David have struck up a strange friendship since they both have the issue of mistaking people for their so. David sees Yugo talk about how even if his life was hard it was worth it for the people he loved and remembers his son fondly.Yuri is generally avoided since even after the merge he's still something of a wildcard, but he gets along well with Hans and Kiara of all people. Sometimes he'd share the stories of the training he underwent in Academia, how the Professor trained him to see people as toys and all the people he's hurt, how his dragon was his only friend and how itd protect him, and Hans couldn't help but hate his pessimistic attitude in expecting this while Kiara wouldn't really care too much but also wouldn't insult him by offering condolences. He knows he's become a monster and he won't deny or forget his mistakes, he'll simply try to do better.

-[note: Vrains suddenly had its ending announced for Sept.25 (i believe it may have been cancelled) so based on the episode title of 120 Yusaku and Ai will reunite and thats what im following here] Yusaku is skittish at best, downright invisible at worst. He doesn't want to be found, and even some of the Assassin Class servants have trouble tracking him down when needed. Ai managed to bring along a spare SOLtis body with him so he can walk around and physically interact with Yusaku. Even if they still had some tension between them they still cared about each other so they would keep each other company. It got real awkward when BB first showed up talking about being a sentient AI, so Ai immediatelt tried to befriend her, only to learn about her inhuman nature. While Ai may dislike that aspect of her, he knows from what happened with Roboppy that you cant forcibly change what you are, so he does his best to try and get along, which infuriates BB to no end since she feels like she's being talked down to. Yusaku as a programmer helps with most of Chaldeas regular workforce and he accomplishes hiding in plain sight by being the only master to interact more with the regular work staff than their servants. That being said, it doesn't change how some like Tamamo or Suzuka try to drag him out so he can meet some of the other servants. He gets along well with Kerry. Likely because they barely speak and share E Rank Luck.

#zerav responds #whoA this got long #sorry #idk how to add readmores on mobile so i may edit later #fgo #fate grand order #yugioh

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ummaannex · 5 years ago

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Interview: At Three A.M Something Just Goes “Ping!” and Other Experiences of Making With the Body as Material

Photograph: Mari Katayama

The full-length windows in the Stenn Gallery usually allow you to see everything from the outside. Passersby can gaze through the wall to ceiling windows and observe most of what’s inside. Featured artist Mari Katayama’s exhibit, however, creates walls out of most of these windows, and allows only glimpses of her exhibit to be discerned. I sat down with Katayama and UMMA’s Curator of Asian Art Natsu Oyobe.

As we spoke, and Natsu Oyobe generously translated, a group of students formed outside, admiring what they could see of Katayama’s featured works through the front window. They were catching glimpses of what looks like a hammock filled with pillows. Had the students ventured in, they could’ve seen photos that range from frothy to surreal. In one, Katayama stands on a bridge, her own subject, sporting what looks like a long second limb that runs from her shoulder to the asphalt. Another photo looks like she has sprouted several limbs...until you see the seams on each extra arm.

Photograph: Mari Katayama

Due to trials tibial hemimelia, Katayama had part of each of her legs removed at the age of nine. She was also born with two fingers on her left hand. She often uses her body as the subject for her art. Katayama’s sewing and photography skills combined create photographs characterized by “soft sculptures” of hand-sewn pseudo-limbs. Her more recent photos, which are also featured in the Stern Gallery, are more abstract. Going into the interview, I was interested in investigating this difference.

Sam: I love everything that you’ve done here, the combination of photos and sculpture work. You talk a lot about the concept of self image, especially surrounding the issue of disability. What got you to the point that you felt so comfortable sharing your experiences in your art and outside of it?

Oyobe: (translating for Katayama): It’s a very complex process to get to exposing her body this way.

She treats her body as material, so she has a certain distance already.

When other people look at this work, and notice her body, she realizes oh, I have this body, so really for her, her body is like one of the materials.

There are two episodes [that got her to this point]. One episode was when she was growing up, still a little child, she looked at herself as the same as everyone until she looked in the mirror and [remembered] she has a different kind of body. That’s when she started thinking of body image. So she tried to behave the same as everyone else. Although she wears prosthetics, she tried to walk like other people, or she tried to hide her left hand with just two fingers so no one could see. As she began to be in the larger world outside of home or school, there are things she couldn’t really do [the same way as] “normal” people. If there is a 14-story high building, she can’t go up the stairs, she might fall, just a little bump, you know.

Then she realizes that she’s different, and that her body is different. But she also feels that where she stands as a person in society, that she’s disabled, just like being a mother, or anything else.

Photograph: Mari Katayama

Sam: So speaking on your art, especially the photos where you get really up close to elements of your body like your back, considering what your previous works look like, what made you choose this new perspective?

Oyobe: These are earlier works. [Oyobe gestures to the first wall.] She posed her body as material, and arranged it in a different way, trying to be as straight as possible with her body. When she was working this way with a little bit of distance, she didn't think her body was very interesting. At the same time, she thought her body was convenient. Because she doesn’t have legs, she can [put herself] inside these soft sculptures that she makes that she can wear. If you have two legs and you're standing, there is already a weight there, so you can’t really play with that. But with her body, she can play around.

Works featured in UMMA’s Stenn Gallery. Come check it out for a close look! Photographs: Mari Katayama

Oyobe: She took these pictures after she gave birth to her daughter. She was surprised [at her daughter’s behavior about her legs]. She seemed to think, “these are my dad’s feet,” but also “those are my mom’s feet.” That was a very fresh surprise. [Mari] didn’t think that way, because she thought her feet were not normal. But for her daughter, she recognizes them as legs. Because of that discovery through her daughter’s eyes, she looked closely at her own body in a very different way.

Sam: I want to talk a little bit about your older works as well, especially your sewing projects. Most of your materials are created by hand. It takes such a long time to create something--you can spend hours on [a project] and it will be really small. I wanted to know if the process is difficult for you, if it’s soothing or calming. Do you like that it takes such a long time to create the things that you put in your photos?

Oyobe: There are two reasons that she took on sewing as part of her artwork. When she was growing up, both her mother and her grandmother sewed clothes. Before she started even drawing, she started sewing. She never went to school for it, but because she grew up in that environment, it’s really soothing for her.

She thinks that with needle, thread, and fabric, you can do anything.

It’s the most powerful tool that she has. For example, if you use glue to put fabric together, it takes time, you have to wait. With needle and thread you can put fabrics together very easily, and if you stuff them with cotton, you can make a sculpture very easily too. The only weak point is that fabrics can burn, catch fire, and also that they're not good with water.

Sam: So don’t spill tea on it, and don’t put a candle near it.

Photograph: Matri Katayama

Sam: I’d like to ask about the arrangements of your pieces, because you make all these [sewing projects], and then you place them very carefully. Many of your images, especially your older pieces, seem to have a “more is more” mentality. At the same time, your scenes don't feel very cluttered or chaotic, because everything is so carefully chosen. How do you choose what goes into your photos, and what goes out?

“She has no plan, nothing!”

Oyobe: [Mari] doesn't believe in any spiritual process. When she begins taking photos, something comes to her mind in that moment. [The first part of] her process is to create these soft sculptures. Sometimes when she has a hard time and no inspiration comes around, she just keeps sewing straight lines. Then she goes to sleep, and at three am something just goes ping! and she seizes the moment, she just starts making art. These 3 dimensional objects come first. Once they're there, she starts placing them, composing them in a different way. Usually she grows the composition to fit them. [As for the photography process], with a digital camera you can check the placement. So she tries taking different poses, and then she changes [them].

Sam: It sounds like a pretty complicated process--you spend a lot of time preparing and during the moment you just think, let’s do whatever we want.

Works featured in UMMA’s Stenn Gallery. Come check it out for a close look! Photographs: Mari Katayama

Sam: My final question is about your sculpture. This is the first thing I noticed when I came in, and it's a lot different from your earlier works. Could you explain this piece a little bit, maybe your motivations, what it means to you?

Oyobe: So this was created when she took those photos [the outdoor scenes], and it was just a net, without the stockings. When she created this piece and this net, it was on an island. There was a garbage disposal [on the island] where they burned all this garbage in a nearby facility. There was this issue of pollution in the water because of that. So she was thinking that [in theory] these nets would remove all the debris out of the water. It’s true that they are not tight nets--you can't really catch anything in them.

Using these nets and trying to remove the garbage, that kind of action isn't really meaningful. She really thinks that is true to Japanese culture: trying to fake it, as if doing something [meaningful].

Sam: So more of a ritual than trying to [take action].

Oyobe: Then she returned to her hometown. In her hometown there's this river with a coppermine upstream. When she first visited the area of the copper mine, before she got pregnant, she felt so close to that pollution issue. You can't really solve these environmental issues, so she’s not sure what to do with that. The title for this piece is “living well is the best revenge”.

Sam: I love that!

Oyobe: In this work, these cushions relate to the lives of people, and these hanging objects in the stockings refer to people’s consumption. This is the first time she showed this piece after she gave birth and she created these pieces. With her daughter's birth, she feels more close to everyday life. When she first created this piece, she felt distant, but [after the birth of her daughter] now she feels much closer.

Works featured in UMMA’s Stenn Gallery. Come check it out for a close look! Photographs: Mari Katayama

You can see Mari Katayama’s exhibit in UMMA’s Stenn Gallery until January 26, 2020. You can also listen to the full interview below.

Interview by: Sam Dunlap

Edited by: Madison Murdoch

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hirazuki · 6 years ago

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I’m going to try and summarize what bothers me about VLD from as objective a standpoint as possible. A lot of people, including myself, have already made posts pointing out specific issues, especially with regards to the messages it sends to abuse victims, so I’m not going to touch on that or any type of emotional issues here at all. I’m going to skip specifics except where needed as examples, and just talk about the nature of story telling itself. As someone who not only has used fiction for escapism, but who has studied story telling both in terms of literary analysis of novels and of religious texts, it’s a subject that I feel very strongly about.

Warning: long ass post.

Okay, a couple of disclaimers first.

One, I am a firm believer in the “don’t like, don’t read” mentality. If I don’t like something, I don’t talk about it, I just move on. Y’all have never seen a single discourse post about The Dragon Prince, right? Yup, that’s ‘cause I really didn’t like it. It goes for countless other things too. I don’t expend time and effort and energy on things I don’t like, that’s just wasteful. So, why am I harping on VLD? Because I really enjoyed it, despite a couple of what I felt were minor issues at the time, for most of its run. That’s why I -- and I imagine the same goes for many other fans -- am so bitter.

Two, I came late into the Voltron universe. I joined in a couple of days before s6 dropped, and only watched DotU as well as the other Western versions in the past couple of months. Haven’t had a chance to see the original Japanese anime yet.

Three, I’m not a shipper, in general. I don’t ship anything in VLD except Zarkon/Honerva. Romance/sexual stuff is just not my thing, I’ll take swords and explosions any day over that. So my saltiness regarding the series has nothing to do with ships.

Alright, so I think my major gripes with the series can be sorted into three categories:

1. Inconsistency of Story Type:

This is, of course, my own opinion, but through my time of consuming fiction, I think there are three types of stories:

Good vs. Evil: the most basic type of story. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and everyone stays well in their lanes. Think Disney movies, typical Saturday morning cartoons -- the heroes are exemplary of good traits, the villains are one-dimensional and unrepentant, evil for the sake of being evil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this story type imo, and there are several stories of this nature that I really do enjoy.

Grey Morality: a much more nuanced take on the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. Due to the very nature of grey morality, there are varying degrees to which this can be implemented. Probably the most common one I’ve seen is where the heroes do some bad/questionable things, the villains/antagonists do some good things or have the right motives or are “noble” in some way; but overall, there is a sense that there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed, certainly by the heroes but also sometimes by the villains/antagonists too. An excellent example of this is Firefly. Another example, that puts a total twist on it by having the protagonist also be the “villain,” is Death Note -- even though the story resolves in a way that to the audience is, really, the only sustainable way possible, it still leaves neither the characters in-show nor the audience with any sense of victory. This concept is taken to the extreme by a series like Tenpou Ibun: Ayakashi Ayashi, where no one is right and no one is wrong, but at the same time everyone is right and wrong, and simply just human. There is no good and no evil, just context, circumstances, and choices.

Combination: this type of story starts with the Good vs. Evil dichotomy but, as the story progresses and the protagonist becomes more acquainted and involved with their environment, both the protagonist and the audience come to understand that the picture is actually much more complicated than that, and it evolves into Grey Morality. Bleach is a great example. We start with seeing the Hollow as evil, mindless monsters that need to be killed; we learn that they are actually human spirits that have transformed into “monsters” through pain and grief and, therefore, we pity them but also understand that it’s a mercy to put them down; we then find out that, actually, not all are mindless and they have a complicated society and culture of their own; and, eventually, come to accept them as (reluctant) allies against a bigger threat, understanding that they are creatures in their own right.

From the moment that Keith -- arguably the character within the main cast that had the most time/character development spent on him -- was revealed as being half-Galra (that is, half the “evil” race of the show), VLD promised to be that third type of story. Because there is no way that the writers would make one of their protagonists evil by default because of his blood in a kids’ show, duh, so by logical conclusion this means that that race is not all evil, after all. This was further emphasized by Lotor’s introduction to the plot -- a severe departure from his character in any previous incarnation -- and cemented by the episode, “The Legend Begins,” where we finally get to see the other side of things and the fact that not even Zarkon and Haggar were “born evil,” as well.

After the Keith reveal, we got shocked reactions from his teammates, notably and understandably Allura; got only an apology from her and not the rest for their treatment of him (which could have been better but, whatever, it was a step in the right direction, great!); and then... back to a weird strained relationship in working alongside Galra without another word on the subject.

Okay. Fine.

Then we get Lotor -- again, some of that initial resentment/treatment could be understandable to some extent, and eventually on the road towards, seemingly, genuine acceptance. Cool.

I won’t go into details about the colony episode, because that’s been done to death already, but, woah, major setback there. Back to the knee-jerk reaction of treating individuals of a race as complicit and responsible for the actions and perception of that race as perpetuated by a handful of individuals. And then -- flash forward to s8 -- we are welcoming Galra allies in our cause! Please join our Coalition! We want to help you!

Look. I’m not saying that you can’t retcon stuff; that you can’t go Good vs. Evil, develop into Grey Morality, and then reveal something and BOOM, jk, it was Good vs. Evil all along, gotcha! I’m sure that there is an author somewhere out there that has pulled that off effectively (I can’t think of any examples myself right now, but I’m sure it must exist somewhere).

I am saying that if you’re going to do that -- if you are going to pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet and sacrifice some crucial character development (and crucial characters themselves, let’s be honest) -- you better have a DAMN GOOD IN-UNIVERSE reason for doing so. And no, shock value or getting rid of a character because they were overshadowing the protags doesn’t count. Otherwise, your protagonists will look like giant jerks. Unless, of course, that’s what you’re going for, but I highly doubt that was the thinking here.

And then, we proceed to flip flop between “I knew it, the Galra are irredeemably evil, what’s wrong with these people?!” (I think Hunk -- HUNK, by far the most empathetic character -- said this at some point in s7?) and “Here, we can work together towards a brighter future” or some shit. You can’t do that. I mean you can, but you’re gonna get major backlash from your audience. Pick a fucking direction and stick with it.

For the past three seasons, it has really felt like the story line is being pulled into two different directions: 1) staying true to the original source material of Paladins = good, Galra/Drule = bad, and 2) providing the viewers with a groundbreaking, nuanced interpretation.

My dudes. You can’t have both. Trying to implement both of these approaches means having morally grey, nuanced characters operating within a narrative framework that is subject to an overarching principle of a strict Good/Evil dichotomy. Do you know how fucking hard that is to pull off effectively without diving headfirst into the pitfall of punishing your morally grey characters by default, simply because they happen to exist in a universe that cannot, by nature, support them???? I can think of only a handful of authors that have managed that and, I would argue, that the man at the top of the list only managed to be so effective and influential because what he wrote was, in essence, a mythology. Mythologies have a totally different set of concerns surrounding them. And even then, he went to great lengths, both in his works and outside of them in discussions/interviews, to note that the “evil” in his world could never have happened without it intentionally being part of the larger cosmological design, i.e. balance. I’m talking, of course, about Tolkien.

Why the fuck would you attempt to pull something like this off in a kids’ cartoon?! Avatar: The Last Airbender, since everyone loves that comparison, was defined by a black/white view that developed into a very simple grey morality, and it was this limited scope that allowed it to be presented so effectively. None of this sashaying back and forth.

Especially when this flip flopping is done for le dramatic effect/shock value, with seemingly no good in-story reason?? Of course it’s gonna fall flat.

2. Concept vs. Execution:

This is probably what drives me crazy the most about VLD.

As an idea, it was fucking brilliant -- anyone who has watched DotU, even with all the nostalgia, I imagine, can admit that it was very much a cut and dry 80s cartoon, with simple concerns; Vehicle Voltron attempted some nuances, but the Lion Voltron part of the show, which was by far the more popular part, was pretty stiff in that regard. VLD took that and introduced themes like: being biracial (Keith, Lotor, etc.), having to choose between duty and family (Krolia), having to choose between personal dreams and important relationships (Shiro), having to overcome deep-seated understandable prejudice and work with people you never thought you could come to stand for a greater cause and through that see that not everything is black and white and attain a greater understanding of the world (Allura), leaving home and learning to survive in a totally foreign environment in the worst circumstances possible (the paladins), dealing with disability, mental illness/ptsd while also dealing with issues of being in a position of leadership/power (Shiro), parental abuse (Lotor), substance abuse (Honerva and Zarkon), being a clone and coming to terms with that (Shiro/Kuron), learning to compromise and sacrifice personal integrity/morals for the betterment/survival of those you have made yourself responsible for (the paladins), and so much more than that. Lotor’s relationship with Honerva/Haggar had serious undertones of both Mother and Child symbolism, as well as Arthurian legend. The whole quintessence thing drew pointers from ancient and medieval concepts of alchemy.

The inclusion of any of these things, injected into a pretty straightforward and tame original source material like DotU, was inspired. What an absolutely fantastic take, with incredible potential.

... and it was the shoddiest, shittiest implementation and execution of any concepts that I have ever seen. Like... how? How did they manage to not be able to successfully see any of these themes to a close, and to actually offend the vast majority of their fanbase (regardless of background, age, race, sexuality, literally from all walks of life) by the way these themes were handled????

I’m sure time restraints, direction from above, etc., played a big part in it, but still. If you don’t have time to properly develop the interpersonal relationships between the core members of your main group of characters -- to the point that, say, Keith and Pidge? Hunk and Shiro? Did they ever properly, truly have any meaningful interactions? -- there’s no way you could properly handle all of this.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Also? As stories are being fleshed out, they and their characters tend to take on a life of their own. The Lotor/Keith parallels? I totally believe and understand how it’s possible that it was unintentional. But when that happens, you go back and rework the rest of your plot to make sense with what you now have before you. You adjust and adapt. You don’t barrel on ahead headless and not acknowledging it, and you don’t force your characters into straitjackets just because you want to doggedly follow this one idea.

3. The Female Lead:

Let me begin by saying that I really, really wanted to like Allura, and the way she was written was one of the biggest turn offs and disappointments for me. I won’t go into specifics regarding her, as there many posts that already address the problematic nature of how she treats people of her race vs. anyone Galra, but I will just look at her character development as a whole.

Perhaps the easiest way for me to voice my frustrations here would be with a comparison. Let’s look at my favorite female protagonist of all time, Nakajima Youko, from Juuni Kokuki (aka. The Twelve Kindgoms).

Youko starts off as a very meek high school girl, from a typical modern Japanese family. Class representative, top grades, is scared of conflict and wants to live up to everyone’s expectations of her, which makes her very submissive, a total coward emotionally, mentally, and physically. She seeks to please everyone and, as a result, harms her own development by never giving any thought to her own desires and ends up bullied by everyone around her. Magic happens, shit goes down, and she is whisked away to a different world that is parallel to our own, along with two friends from school; ripped from her home, her family, with absolutely no way back. This other world has a different language, people who end up in there from our world are treated like garbage and are slaves, has a medieval level of tech/advancement, and Youko with her friends has to figure out how to survive. She finds out she is actually queen of one of the realms in this world, which makes her a target of various groups. She is betrayed by literally everyone around her, everyone she places her trust in, including the two friends that got transported to this world with her.

She goes from meek and mild to bloodthirsty and brash; lashing out at everyone around her, plotting to kill those that offer her a helping hand, becoming unreasonably suspicious and racist and way out of line. Understandably so, but the narrative doesn’t, for one moment, present this as okay. Some more stuff happens and she finally snaps out of it, comes to a couple of realizations, and has major character development. She develops the attitude that, yes, people have betrayed and hurt her, but their actions towards her and their opinion of her is none of her business. It will not stop her from acting in ways that are in line with her own morals; if people choose to betray and use her, that’s on them. She will simply do what she must, and treat everyone as an individual according to their actions. This doesn’t mean that she adopts a pushover mentality -- it just means that she loses her knee-jerk reaction, and doesn’t rush to conclusions. She becomes a badass warrior and queen, strong and just, and, frankly, one of the most well-developed female characters I have ever seen.

Do I think this is the only way to write a strong female character? Of course not. But I’m convinced this is what the writers wanted to do with Allura, this kind of progression and path, from being angry, lost, and alone to being a confident, capable, magnificent ruler. And, imo, they totally missed the mark.

I think that the writers were so focused on giving us a “strong” modern female character, and getting as far away from her DotU damsel in distress depiction as possible, that they ended up writing her as, basically, a bully. Sure, they tell us -- both through other characters’ words in the show and through interviews -- about her diplomacy, peaceful nature, leadership quality, open-mindedness, etc., but they never show it to us. In almost every key moment in the series, she has been written to be combative and suffering from tunnel-vision.

And a huge part of this is that they simply didn’t give her any room to grow. Youko’s character started off at maybe... 5% of her potential? She was honestly so “weak,” I thought about dropping the series. But by the point the anime ended (because the story itself is unfinished and unlikely to continue, unfortunately), I’d say she’s at around 70%. That makes for an extremely dramatic, fulfilling, and believable character development. The VLD writers started Allura off much higher than that. Too high. From the get-go she’s a highly accomplished martial artist, has incredible physical strength due to her Altean heritage, a seemingly natural affinity for leadership and for appealing to people, she’s very attractive, well spoken, had a loving and supportive family, is a princess, had a brilliant alchemist for a father, has access to the universe’s greatest super weapon -- I mean, yes, she’s had to deal with immense loss and grief and come to terms with it in a very short period of time, and lost her father a second time so to speak with Alfor’s AI -- but overall, everything has been set up and handed to her in a nice package. Other than overcoming her hatred towards the Galra and idealization of Altea/Alteans, really, there’s nothing left for her to do that would be defining for her character.

That’s not to say that characters that are extremely accomplished from the start are a bad thing. But in their case, their emotional and mental development and maturity is that much more important, because that’s all that’s left to work with. The writers didn’t really give Allura any significant room to grow in terms of any of that. (And no, I don’t consider her new alchemical powers from Oriande as her growing; she expended no effort for that, it wasn’t really a trial at all for her; it was like me playing a video game on casual mode with the “killallenemies” console command enabled). Her overcoming her racism towards the Galra, beginning with Keith and BoM and continuing to do so with subsequent Galra allies, had a TON of potential and I had been so excited to see where it would go; but that fell flat, totally forgotten by the story.

In contrast, you have Lotor -- we see him struggling to claw his way out of the hand that fate has dealt him, to grow beyond his family’s influence and abuse. Both on and off screen, even described by his own enemies in great detail, we see just how much he has had to fight and to earn everything he has and he is, even things that shouldn’t have to be “earned” in the first place. He’s lost Daibazaal and Altea, both his father and his mother, he’s too Galra for anyone who’s not and not nearly enough Galra for anyone who is. Literally nothing has been handed to him. The juxtaposition between him and Allura, had Allura been given more breathing room by the writers, could have been fantastic and I would have shipped the hell out of it, like I do in DotU. She’s had everything he’s ever wanted (loving family, supportive father, Alfor himself, exploration, alchemy), etc.; envy would have been extremely appropriate on his part, and very interesting to work through, but that was never explored either.

So, I feel like what ended up happening was that a huge imbalance in how these two characters came across was created, made only more evident when their relationship with each other was what was front and center. And, at least for me, this is what makes me completely unable to see Allura’s side of things, and I freely admit it -- I simply don’t understand her or her actions, because I don’t feel like I’ve been shown enough of her inner workings as a character to be able to care about her in the slightest. I can definitely see where the writers were going with her, or where they thought they were going. But unless they actually meant for the character that is, for all intents and purposes, their female lead to be a racist, abusive, immature person playing at being an adult and at being the leader of a coalition spanning galaxies, who has no problem condemning millions of lives to death and devastation at a whim of her emotions because they are Valid™, and who wades dangerously close to “Mary Sue” territory many times due the way the narrative frames her... then all I see on screen is an unfinished character. Unfinished, because the writers didn’t take any opportunities in the narrative for the flaws and issues she does have to be addressed and overcome, opportunities of which there were plenty! I absolutely don’t mind that she has flaws -- flawed heroes are amazing. But, you gotta do something about them, i.e. address them and work through them. Otherwise your heroes remain static in a plot that is evolving and that’s not a good look.

And, you know, I honestly think DotU Allura is a much stronger female character. She works for everything she gets. She works her ass off. She has to fight to not only be allowed to be part of the team and fly a lion, but even just to do everyday common things like be out in the fields or swim or whatever; forget practicing martial arts. Coran literally ties her up at one point to prevent her from participating. Nanny is a constant battle for her. Over everything, from her clothes to her manner of speaking to where she’s going. But she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t give up. And she fucks up, BIG TIME, several times, she does TONS of stupid shit. But she learns, acknowledges it, gets called out on it, tries again, and keeps on trying. DotU Allura’s biggest battles, in my mind, aren’t with Lotor or the Drule forces or Zarkon, but with her own team and those she considers family, and her struggle for the others’ acceptance of herself and her skills within the group. And for that, she is a much stronger, more solid female character than VLD Allura, despite all superficial appearances and frilly pink dresses and 80s voice acting.

Again, like I said in a previous post, I don’t conform to the view that creators owe their fans anything. Write things however the fuck you want. You want to kill Allura off, fine. Do away with Lotor too? Cool. I completely understand people who want happy endings in fiction because, it’s true, reality fucking sucks; there are several fictional works I turn to whenever real life is too much. And I would be lying if I said that I don’t crave stories where characters like Lotor are given happy endings; of course I want my favorite characters to be okay. But overall, I’m the type of person who, as long as things make for an effective, compelling narrative, I’ll be content with it, regardless of whether the ending is tragic or happy or anything in between.

So you want to kill off your morally grey character and your female lead, who is also one of the only women on the team, who is also a princess figure, who has also been completely visually redesigned in such a way that you know women of color will relate to her? That’s fine by me, go right ahead. But do so in a way that is meaningful and makes sense within the larger narrative you created, and isn’t some empty, sensationalist gesture.

And also be aware of your fanbase. This is a reboot -- that comes with certain expectations attached, as a number of the viewers will very likely be fans of the old series, watching out of curiosity, nostalgia, etc. Expectations like, the princess lives, the heroes aren’t assholes, etc. (and I’m referring to expectations from DotU and other Western iterations, rather than the original Japanese series). You don’t have to conform to these expectations -- personally, I’m a big fan of tropes being subverted -- but you need to be aware of them. You need to know the rules before you break them, and if you break them, you better break them damn well.

Imo, VLD ultimately failed to deliver on these fronts, and pretty much fell prey to what a lot of series do -- it couldn’t handle the shift from being primarily episodic in nature (i.e., each episode is self-contained, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, while operating under a distant general goal, like defeating Zarkon; so, s1 and s2) to becoming a more complex narrative unraveling a hidden agenda (s3 onwards). Kind of like how the paladins made no provisions for how they would handle things after Zarkon’s defeat, it feels like the writers didn’t really have one solid plan for how to develop past that point as well.

tl;dr: Whoever is responsible for the way VLD turned out should write a book: how to offend your entire audience in eight seasons or less.

#okay i think this is my last personal post on the matter #i think i've vented about everything that's been bugging me for the past couple of seasons #i'll still reblog and comment on things i find interesting #but i'm gonna focus my energy on constructive stuff #like plucking the hairline of lotor's wig and writing fanfic :)#talk: v

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hallmark-movie-fanatics · 6 years ago

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Becca Tobin on Why Stephanie & Ben Are a 'Great Match' in 'Sister of the Bride'

By Meredith Jacobs Meredith Jacobs

Women can have it all — love and a career — and that's exactly what Stephanie is after in the newest Hallmark Channel rom-com, Sister of the Bride.

In Becca Tobin's latest movie with the network, she plays Stephanie, for whom everything seems to be falling into place when she's up for tenure and her boyfriend of six months, Ben (Ryan Rottman), proposes. Upon returning home to share the news of their engagement with her family, she learns that her sister, Tracy (Chelsea Gilson), is also newly engaged.

TV Insider spoke with Tobin about Sister of the Bride and what draws her to Hallmark films.

Can you start by talking about your character? Where is Stephanie personally and professionally when the movie begins?

Becca Tobin: Stephanie is on track to make tenure as an anthropology professor, and she is in a really exciting place in her career because she's one of the youngest in her field at the moment to be on track to doing that.

She is newly engaged to her boyfriend, and they hit a bit of a crossroads when he gets the opportunity of a lifetime for a job in Cambridge. The movie picks up in a place where they've just gotten engaged and he is up for this big job, so they're figuring out what comes next.

So, let's talk about Ben. Who is he and what makes him such a good match for Stephanie that getting engaged after six months is a no-brainer?

Ben is also a really career-driven man, and he's kind and loving, and after six months, Stephanie talks about how she's never felt this way about someone and even though it's quick, it felt special and different. We've all been in those situations before.

They have an incredible connection, and from the beginning of the movie, you really do root for them as a couple because they have a lot of similarities with the career stuff, and they obviously are very family-oriented and they want a family of their own one day. They're a great match, it's just sometimes timing is really complicated with relationships.

They haven't been dating too long, so are the challenges they face here the first real problems they've had in their relationship?

Yeah, they're probably the biggest problems they've faced in six months and they're pretty big problems, so they've been thrown into the fire off the bat.

How do the two of them work through conflict? Similar methods? Different ones?

They seem to deal with things similarly. At first, they both want to avoid and not really have to think about the different options because they're waiting to get the final verdict on the job, and then they get the final verdict and they both are too afraid to talk about it because they love each other so much that they are both very scared to lose each other by discussing it.

Ultimately, they communicate and they voice their really true, honest opinions and feelings about the issue and they come to a conclusion.

Can you talk about Stephanie's family? What are they like, especially in comparison to her, and how does she get along with each member?

Stephanie comes from a really, really tight family. She has a sister and her two parents, and they are all pretty similar, but Stephanie has definitely been the most impulsive of the family members. Her sister is an attorney, and she's been very rational her whole life, and Stephanie operates a little bit more from her heart. You can see that [her family has] dealt with this her whole life, and they love her and accept her for it, but that's definitely something that she does differently from the rest of the family.

How does Ben get along with Stephanie's family?

At first, there's a little bit of tension just because he's spending time with my family for the first time, and it's after a very quick engagement, so you can see that Stephanie's dad is hesitant. It's tense in the beginning, but Stephanie's sister and mom really do love Ben from the get-go, so it is a nice thing to see.

Can you compare the sisters' relationships? What do Stephanie and Ben admire about Tracy and Preston's relationship, and what do Tracy and Preston admire about Stephanie and Ben's?

Tracy and Preston have been together a lot longer, for several years before their engagement. They're just a little bit more of the planners, but I think that Stephanie and Ben's connection is just as deep. It's just a different kind, but I think each sister respects the other and sees that Preston is such a good match and Ben is such a good match, even though they're very different people.

You've now done two wedding movies and one Christmas movie now on Hallmark. Is there anything you'd like to tackle next on the network? Do you have anything else coming up?

Nothing's coming up, but I always have such a good time doing these movies, so I really have no preference. I would love to do another Christmas movie. I think that that's just such an incredible time of year for the network, and it's just such a fun to be a part of, so that would be awesome, but again, I would do any type of project with the network because I'm just such a big fan and it's always such an enjoyable experience.

(A Song for Christmas)

What draws you to these roles, where you know your character's going to have a happy ending?

I really like that you know with Hallmark, you're going to, most of the time, get that happy ending. We like seeing that, women, men, no matter where you come from or where you live or what your situation is, it's always really nice to sit down and immerse yourself in this world of Hallmark. I'm really drawn to these projects and these characters because it's always very positive and optimistic.

These roles are also really three-dimensional women. Stephanie, for instance, is a really family-oriented girl who wants a family of her own but also wants a really incredible career, and so that resonates with me a lot because that's pretty much who I am and all the women in my life. I like being able to represent that for women and be able to say, "you can have it all and it's okay to want it all."

Sister of the Bride, Movie Premiere, Saturday, June 29, 9/8c, Hallmark Channel

SOURCE:

https://www.tvinsider.com/789085/becca-tobin-sister-of-the-bride-hallmark-stephanie-ben/

#interviews #becca tobin #link #sister of the bride #june weddings #hallmark movies #hallmark channel #photo preview

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nerdolopedia-blog · 6 years ago

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Worldbuilding Magazine: Mapping Aurora - An RPG Case Study

THIS ARTICLE PRESENTED BY

Volume 2 / Issue 5 : Cartography & Navigation- Visit their site to read the full issue

Mapping Aurora: An RPG Case Study

by Cathy, the Overprepared GM

When I built my world, I started smallish, fleshing out a single culture and lavishing attention on the national map. I took the time to get the scale right, establishing a travel time of ten days as a constraint first. With that number decided, I mixed in my desired historical influences, extrapolated the physical geography, determined the population distribution, and finally set the political boundaries.

I also created smaller maps for specific adventures. The city map for the capital helped the players hunt down a missing nobleman in the campaign kick off session. The hill fort map allowed the players to investigate the mystery at the heart of the first major adventure. The blueprints for the ominous keep organized the dungeon crawl in the heart of the fens. After I had fleshed out all the low-level cartography, I moved outward, firming up the neighboring nations so that they could explore more advanced stories involving international travel, exploration, and politics.

It was easy to figure out what maps to create and what to put on each of them, because traditional maps are such a well-explored space in terms of information design. If my players are traveling or discussing things on the national level, I can just open any atlas and see that the big national maps have national and district boundaries, settlements, natural features, roads, and other points of interest. If my players are adventuring in a settlement, I can look at city maps to see that they have elements like important buildings, streets, districts, and waterways. If they need to see how a building of any size is laid out, I know that it needs to be organized by floor and depict rooms, walls, hallways, doors, and major furniture.

Regardless of scale, maps always serve a few broad functions:

Navigation. They show points of interest as well as navigational routes so that players can plan where they’re going and how they’ll get there. Depending on the scale, the routes and points of interest may be anything from wormholes and planets to hallways and rooms.

Reference. They act as a reference for important locations that the player needs to remember. By displaying it visually, a good map can indicate relationships, improve memory, and give details about what each element is. For example, cities, mountains, rivers, forests, monuments, etc. all have established conventions for how to show them.

Atmosphere. A good map also evokes a clear sense of place. For example, a player will have a sense for terrain when they see that their path takes them through a mountain ridge. They may have to hike through a tumbled set of foothills, scale an inaccessible and ice-capped top of the world, or traverse an unexplored jungle menaced with active volcanoes. Perhaps the players only have to tread a well-traveled trade road with inns and villages along the way. The map helps the group feel immersed in the world and roleplay better. They can look at it and make their own choices about which path to take and what preparation they need to make before setting off. Players can anticipate the types of challenges they’ll encounter and the amount of time it will take. Maps also help me stay consistent with how I present the world to the players.

As long as I only needed to chart a world with geography similar to ours, the cartography remained straightforward. It wasn’t trivial, mind you, but the challenge was in doing it well, not in figuring out how cartography works from first principles. However, my campaign planning for later levels had them traveling beyond their home plane. I needed maps for higher level adventures that filled these same roles in navigation, reference, and atmosphere that blueprints and national atlases had in lower levels.

This expansion into the multiverse challenged my cartographic skills. I wanted the planes to truly feel different from each other, with locations in each world that simply couldn’t exist in the others. But that meant I was creating some really bizarre planes. I needed to start from those fundamental principles of design and figure out how to apply them to new circumstances.

Fluidity

The first issue I wrestled with was the fundamental nature of Aurora, a plane dominated by the goddess of spring, youth, the arts, and inspiration. Since birds were sacred to her, I decided to make it a plane of air with flying denizens. I imagined floating islands with localized gravity whose buildings and streets encircled giant boulders. The roots and branches of epiphyte trees gnarled together to form giant, floating cloud forests. Migratory flocks of alien creatures shaped like blimps and squids and jellyfish traveled long circuits between the cloud forests. In between areas of no or light gravity were sinks of higher gravity, pulling in accumulations of detritus over time. Technological cultures harnessed kinetic energy by using things comparable to waterwheels or windmills. Native species all fly, float, or cling with ease, and even human visitors could float clumsily from place to place. And winding through it all were the jet streams, unceasing wind that would push everything in regular paths. Travel from place to place within Aurora would involve both moving within a jetstream and hopping from one stream to another.

For my players to travel through the fluid space of Aurora, they would need a useful map. I ran into an immediate problem while planning: I wasn’t sure how to draw locations that changed relative to each other. National boundaries didn’t make as much sense in a place where everything moves. How could I depict the political organization of people without political boundaries? I started by trying to find real-world analogs of maps that dealt with air currents and then started thinking about other fluids, hoping to get new ideas.

I found one common approach that I called the colored, vector-lines approach, such as this picture of the Jet stream or this one of ocean currents. It shows location, direction, temperature, and strength of the currents by using colors and arrows. The visual worked and it’s an established approach (so I’d have lots of examples to learn from), but I think I prefer this image created by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which uses what I termed the flat-ribbon style. This approach shows location, direction, and temperature, and the simplification makes the overall flow much easier to grasp.

As much as I love JPL’s approach, it still was not quite what I needed. As with all graphics of currents, this one focuses on showing the currents with respect to the landforms around them. This indication is crucial on Earth because that’s how we establish context for location. And location is why we use maps. However, I was trying to depict a world that has no landforms, so I needed to remember that JPL design and keep looking for ideas.

My search lead me to gas giants projections, like this flattened one of Jupiter, which is comparable to a mercator projection of Earth. Unlike with Earth however, it shows that the structure of Jupiter is composed of bands of currents. Jupiter’s winds aren’t influenced by landforms, so their structure is formed by the spherical shape of the planet, the force of gravity, and the Coriolis effect. That made sense to me as a way to envision Aurora. I could see it as a world with disjunct air currents that have rough, turbulence between them. Technologically savvy cultures could set up windmills along the borders, utilizing the constant relative wind as a source of unending energy. I could show each band as a self-contained linear graphic. Political boundaries would take place naturally within bands, but some empires might colonize into nearby bands the way Earth empires have had colonies in different continents.

Seeing the Eye of Jupiter also gave me the idea to put similar giant storms in Aurora. They would form an almost impassable obstacle in a band. The truly colossal ones might push the turbulent boundary outward, compressing everything nearby so that the currents would flow fast and narrow for many layers of neighboring regions.

The bands would travel at different velocities, so if I wanted to set specific speeds for each one, I could figure out the interval between the alignment of each pair. As a GM though, I probably wouldn’t do it. If they needed to go from a place on one band to a place in another band, I would just decide on the spot how long it takes for those locations to line up again, based on where I want the story to go.

With those decisions made, I had an approach for drawing a map (disjunct, flat bands of different lengths that connected east-west) and the list of elements for which I needed iconography:

Turbulence regions

Storms

Cloud forests

Boulders (including those with settlements)

Free-floating settlements

Gravity-induced collection spots (and a way to indicate strength.)

Then it occurred to me that, in a plane of air, points of interest could float at different altitudes. In fact, entire bands could overlap, flowing at different heights and winding among each other like individual noodles in a bowl of spaghetti. And that’s the next complicating factor.

Overlapping Altitudes

The more I considered the problem of depth and altitude, the more I realized I was going to have to deal with it in a number of situations. Normally maps are projections. They take the surface area of a three-dimensional object and spread it flat so you see the entire surface at once, even if you stretch or squish parts of the surface or make cuts to spread it out. Imagine the surface of Earth being a skin, and we just take it off the world and lay it flat, taking the surface of the sphere and spreading it onto a flat planar area. In a typical map projection, we ignore anything above or below that skin.

However, with Aurora I was looking at a situation where I really needed all three dimensions. On any given latitude and longitude, there might be a handful of different points of interest at different altitudes. In a typical world, they’d be above the "skin", and I would ignore them. For Aurora, there was no skin. There were just the immense overlapping air currents piled on top of each other and winding like a nest of serpents. If I flattened it like a typical projection, points of interest would overlap, turning the map into a confusing mess.

So I tried to think of other situations where people dealt with three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional way and ended up finding a lot of different approaches. Some of the more useful image types were blueprints, engineering drawings, subway lines, cutaway views, and exploded view images. Jet stream diagrams helped me understand the height issue as well, because what’s going on in the upper atmosphere isn’t always the same as what’s on the ground.

I got lost down the rabbit hole looking at various images, but eventually I extracted some overarching principles. As far as I could see, people take a few useful approaches when trying to depict three dimensions onto a flat drawing.

First, if there isn’t too much overlapping, draw it like a two-dimensional map, but use color, shadow, or iconography to indicate depth (for example, the Jet Stream example or this graphic of the Norwegian Current). I think this approach works best if depth is the most important thing depicted, and the rest of the information can be simplified. Otherwise, the depth/altitude information becomes hard to notice. If Aurora didn’t have many types of natural geography or had only one or two great currents winding their way through a static airscape, that might work, but I envisioned something a lot more dynamic. So, reluctantly, I let this idea go.

Second, depict it as a 3-D cutaway drawing, such as this drawing of a nuclear reactor or this one of skin. I think if the map were narrow enough that each longitudinal point only had space to fit a couple points of interest, then this would work. Drawing it well would take some serious skills and time on task, which I wasn’t sure I could devote, so I put the idea in my pocket and moved on.

Third, divide altitude into discrete layers and deal with them separately. That’s what blueprints do, such as this one of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, where each story is self-contained. If I divided the currents into layers of different altitudes, I could do a similar treatment for Aurora. The drawback is that sometimes it’s a little tough to see how the layers overlap, a problem I could ameliorate by drawing or printing out the different layers in transparency film. Then, I could look at each layer independently or stack them on top of each other as needed to see how one would line up with another if the player wanted to travel between layers.

The Multiverse

I had a plan for drawing my planes, but then I ran into another problem: how to depict the overall multiverse itself. When my players travel from one plane to the next, they would need to be able to plan their routes. They would need the interplanar equivalent of a roadmap. For a single world, I have a very good idea of how travel works because I do it all the time. I understand what information is useful to have on a map for someone going from place to place. I wasn't sure exactly what would be best for interplanar travel, however. So again, I started with a bit of research, Googling terms like “multiverse map” and “map of the planes” and looking at images those searches brought up.

Most multiverse graphics focused on acting as a cosmological reference—using design to show what planes exist and, if possible, how they’re related to each other. They seemed to be less like geographic maps and more like Venn or network diagrams. This approach seemed useful as a reference and to establish atmosphere, but it seemed fairly useless for navigation. Of course, I couldn’t resist creating a cosmological reference graphic anyway, though I wasn’t sure it would really help my players if they wanted to really understand how to travel around the planes.

Then I started combing through my information design books and websites to see if some other, non-map design might have been applicable. I looked through a cornucopia of graphs, charts, tables, layouts, and designs too specialized to have gotten an official name, but in doing so, I realized I needed to figure out the details of how interplanar travel worked before I tried to conceptualize an information design for it.

Interplanar Travel

After some deep thought, I decided to split interplanar travel into three categories.

Poofing: I call the first category of interplanar travel the poof method, because they go “poof”, just like that. Feel free to refer to this by a more dignified name. Using the poof method, the characters can instantly travel from an arbitrary location in one plane to a location of their choosing in a different plane. I mean, they may experience some time passing, but for all intents and purposes, they just magically teleport. Examples of the poof method include using the Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz, the Tardis from Doctor Who, or the Gate spell in D&D. If interplanar travel depends on poofing from place to place, then the players only need to have maps of the individual planes and some sort of cosmological reference. They don’t need any sort of map analog to traverse the multiverse.

Portals: Using portals, there are specific places in each world that are connected to specific places in other worlds. They may be called conjunctions, coterminous planes, wormholes, doorways, gates, or some other term. For cartographic purposes, they’re all the same. These portals are part of the plane’s geography. If the portal is open or active, then travel through it is very much like teleporting with the poof method. The key difference is that players need a visual depiction of how the portals connect to each other to help them navigate. In particular, they need to be able to tell where the portals are in their plane of origin and where they connect to in their destination plane. I think flight maps, similar to what airlines have, serve as the best analog in designing a useful atlas for navigation with portals. They show all their flights as curved lines overlaying a world map. The difference is that in a multiverse with portal travel, we’d need lines to connect points on disjunct world maps.

Subspace: In this scenario, characters travel by going into portals, but travel through the portal is not instantaneous. Instead, they enter a different place (I’m calling it subspace) that must itself be navigated in order to arrive at their destination. Subspace can have very different physical rules than the other planes, but all planes are connected to it somehow. Examples might be the Spire from Planescape or the Ena from Andrea Host’s Touchstone series or the Never Never from Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Mechanically, this is a special case of portals where the connections all go in and out of a single world. However designing a navigational aid for subspace is a different design problem than doing so for a set of portals. Since everything goes through one area, and that area is not itself a destination, then it’s more useful to use a subway map as an analogy. Players will need a good reference of possible portal stations that connect the other planes to the subspace and enough geographic info of the subspace to navigate from portal to portal. They won’t need a full atlas of the subspace, but have to understand enough to choose routes. Now, subway maps are problematic because they heavily simplify the design. This makes it easier to read,but the increased legibility comes at a cost of geographic realism. Since subway riders only need to know which stops to use, distance and direction can be distorted far more than in regular maps. It’s a design approach that many people will be familiar with, but requires judicious handling.

After some contemplation, I decided to use the subspace approach to interplanar travel. Players enter a separate subspace, Aeon, and have to navigate around that before exiting to a new plane. It can also act as a way to take shortcuts if they’re clever, connecting two places that are distant from each other by a shorter path in Aeon.

Bringing that back to Aurora, that meant that in addition to adding portal locations to the map of Pandora (the original world my characters started in) and Aurora (the plane of air), I would have to create a separate map showing Aeon. It would initially focus on the portals and land between them. I could add lines connecting portals within Aeon to those on other planes. Eventually, if the stations and lines filled enough of the space, it might make sense to make a full Aeon atlas, but it’s more likely that we’d finish the campaign before we got that far.

The Takeaway

You may or may not want to use Aurora. However, if you decide to chart your own multiverse, here are some common lessons to keep in mind.

Cartography and Information Design are fascinating fields developed by smart folks. If you’re creating something new, it’s useful to look around and see what other people have created to deal with similar constraints. Take the time to nail down what you’re trying to show before you try to design for it.

The Purpose of Maps in RPGs can be boiled down to:

Navigation: helping players understand how to get from place to place.

Reference: because looking up all the places and how they relate to each other is easier with a picture than a list.

Atmosphere: to associate qualities or characteristics to places.

Airscape Icons can mostly be the same as iconography from more traditional atlases. Floating cities are still cities, after all, though some features require new icons:

Turbulence regions

Storms

Epiphyte forests

Areas of heavy or differing gravity

Relative wind speed or cycle length (the time it takes a current to make a full cycle through its path)

Vacuum or pressure difference

Fluid planes are ones where the points of interest move in relation to each other. One approach might be to envision them either as jet streams or currents moving among stable points. Another might be to visualize them acting like gas giants with the entire airscape banded by currents moving at different velocities and separated by a turbulent transition. In either case, it’s useful to draw one map that shows all the bands and how they relate to each other physically. Then, draw each band separately as its own graphic (the same way we label cities on a world map) and create separate city maps. Fluid planes may be dominated by air, gas, or water.

Planes with altitude are those where different natural geographies may exist at each two-dimensional point. If there is little overlap, it may be possible to draw this as a more traditional, two-dimensional map and just indicate depth or altitude by color, line, or iconography. If there is a lot of overlap, then this traditional 2-D style is not practical. Instead, the most workable design organizes the world into layers at different depths. For a water world, those layers may include a surface layer, photic zone, and aphotic zone. An arboreal world may include layers like the canopy, understory, surface, and root zones, while an underground world’s layers may simply serve as depth indicators.

Cosmological charts are a useful reference to know what planes exist and how they relate to each other thematically, but they generally do little to help players navigate.

Portal maps show how different planes connect to each other through portals. They are similar to flight maps in the real world. If interplanar travel always goes through a special space that is not a destination of itself, then it may be practical to create something like a simplified subway map to help players navigate between worlds.

Worldbuilding Magazine is a bi-monthly publication which covers a variety of worldbuilding topics. You can visit their website and read full issues here. Make sure to join their Discord or follow them on twitter for the latest news or to talk with the team that creates it. Nerdolopedia is a proud partner of Worldbuilding Magazine.

Cover Image by Tristen Fekete

#Tabletop Gaming #tabletop #fantasy #High Fantasy #Cartography #Fantasy

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shubhamkaroti · 3 years ago

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Virtual Reality: Transforming Industry with New Technology

Virtual Reality is how we use computer technology to create an artificial environment. Virtual Reality's maximum right now-recognizable element is the head-set-up show (HMD). People are visual creatures, and show technology is often the single biggest distinction among immersive digital truth systems and conventional consumer interfaces.

Virtual Reality is the making of a virtual climate introduced to our faculties so that we experience maybe we were truly there. It utilizes a large group of innovations to accomplish this objective and is an in fact complex accomplishment that needs to represent our discernment and cognizance. It has both diversion and genuine employment. The innovation is becoming less expensive and more far-reaching. We can hope to see a lot more inventive uses for the innovation later on and maybe a key manner by which we impart and work on account of the conceivable outcomes of Virtual reality.

Virtual Reality (VR), the utilization of PC displaying and reenactment that empowers an individual to associate with a brilliant three-dimensional (3 dimensional) visual or another tangible climate. VR applications drench the client in a PC-created climate that reproduces reality using intelligent gadgets, which send and get data and are worn as goggles, headsets, gloves, or bodysuits. In a commonplace VR design, a client wearing a cap with a stereoscopic screen sees vivid pictures of a reenacted climate.

The deception of being there (telepresence) is affected by movement sensors that get the client's developments and change the view on the screen in like manner, typically continuously (the moment the client's development happens). Along these lines, a client can visit a mimicked set-up of rooms, encountering altering perspectives and viewpoints that are convincingly identified with his own head turnings and steps. Wearing information gloves outfitted with power criticism gadgets that give the impression of touch, the client can even get and control protests that he finds in the virtual climate.

Virtual reality is used in many applications such as

Architecture

Medicine

Entertainment

Sport

The Art

Virtual Reality in Gaming:

VR gaming is the time period used to explain a new technology of computer video games with virtual fact (VR) generation that gives gamers a without a doubt immersive, the first-character attitude of sport movement. You can each enjoy and affect the game surroundings through a spread of VR gaming devices and add-ons, which includes VR headsets, sensor-equipped gloves, hand controllers, and extra.

VR games may be performed on standalone systems, specialized game consoles, or the usage of superior laptops and computers which can electricity the main VR headsets which include Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Types of Virtual Reality Game:

VR Games on PCs and Laptops:

Games played on top-of-the-line PCs give the most point-by-point virtual conditions and game choices. famous VR headsets for PCs and workstations in the past due to 2021 incorporate Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

VR Games on Game Consoles:

These games are like those played on PCs yet work just with a game control center from explicit producers. The main model is the PlayStation VR headset/stage.

VR Games on Smartphones:

For transportable VR gaming, Smartphone manufacturers are supplying their personal headsets, regulators, and video games (VR, AR, and MR). One such headset/stage is the Samsung tools VR.

Virtual Reality in Architecture:

Virtual Reality is very useful for the architecture industry. Let's look at why we need virtual Reality in the architecture industry. One of the complicated things faced by architects is to convince them that a design works before receiving valuable feedback that can be integrated into a finished design.

Virtual reality (VR) is a hotly debated issue in the design and in light of current circumstances. Numerous Enscape clients are exploring different avenues regarding Virtual reality in engineering plans and areas of now utilizing it in their day-by-day business. A VR compositional show gives you an entire 360 view empowering you to get an inclination for space and plan and see the real size of a task. We began Enscape in 2013 with the vision that one day each compositional undertaking can be knowledgeable about Virtual simulation.

To be genuinely saying, Virtual Reality innovation should permit customers to completely collaborate with a proposed model; daring to such a limit as to have the choice to open and close doorways and windows, turn lights on and off, and move objects around the room. This degree of connection will then, at that point, need to shape part of the customer's input for example, what were the parts of the plan that the customer especially appreciated? Where did they battle to draw in and communicate? What didn't they like?

Due to the fact that absolutely everyone receives to interact and revel in a model in a life-like simulation, it‘s less complicated to speak about details that might not be so clean to peer and realize in every other format. It's easy to apply pleasantly, basically a single tick on, and the VR headset will start showing your variant in Enscape, permitting us all to encounter a structure before it's fabricated.

Virtual Reality in Medicine:

Virtual reality is valuable in arranging complex activities in advance, for example, neurosurgical systems, as it helps the careful group stroll through the entire medical procedure and practices their arranged intercession.

This augments wellbeing by limiting amazements. The information is ordered from CT, MRI, and ultrasound examinations, which are supplemented by VR and haptics. The reproduction closely resembles the genuine patient when in careful environmental elements.

VR is likewise significant in carefully advanced mechanics, which relies upon an automated arm constrained by a human specialist at a control center. The specialist relies upon the camera situated inside the body to give a perspective on the space being worked on. In any case, material and tangible input is additionally significant during a medical procedure, and a reasonable impersonation might be given by VR in their nonattendance.

Virtual Reality in Entertainment:

VR universes are online Virtual experience social stages where individuals can associate with one another. Correspondence in virtual spaces is similar to correspondence in reality, yet it gives practically limitless potential outcomes in the selection of settings and methods of investing energy.

The blend of theater and augmented reality can make a fruitful model for business.The dramatic VR content guesses clear methods of adaptation and can bring stable pay for quite some time, in contrast to the VR films, which become unimportant rapidly because of the low association of watchers to the activity.

It allows common people to engage with the simulated environment with the help of view 3D images and these images appear life-sized to the person, so it seems realistic and enjoyable.it also provides lots of exciting and amazing 360 degrees videos. Entertainment brands are consistently watching out for new and inventive ways of connecting with their crowd. The appearance of cutting-edge advances like AR/VR has given them a successful method for expanding client commitment and lifting their income.

Virtual Reality in Art Industry:

Do you know that virtual reality is used in the art industry? Let's see how-virtual reality is helping the artist to draw, paint and sculpt the virtual environment. They use immersive technology and high-quality photography in sculptures and painting. By using VR headsets, customers can see beyond painting into the world created by the artist.

Everyone knows that creating any form of art is not an easy thing. Artists have to create innovative and original Art. Nowadays artists and designers are taking the help of computer software and gadgets to change art in an impressive and dramatic way. its new generation of digital artists who don't only depend on conventional modes of paper and pencil. Due to virtual Reality used in art, many people are taking an interest in the art industry.

Difference Between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality:

Virtual Reality and augmented reality are confounding wordings considering they percentage some likenesses, but additionally evaluation one way or the other. AR device detects markers and purchaser places and gadget calls on the pre-described content material to be overlaid.AR content material fabric overlaid on a detected marker or consumer location. better bandwidth for top-nice stories – upward of 100 Mbps to flow. nice suitable whilst the app desires to seize customers’ environments.

Whereas virtual truth creates an interactive sequence of audio, animations, movies, and URLs.No want for markers and user region detection to provide three-D content material cloth.lower bandwidth requirement – as a minimum of 25 Mbps to circulate. pleasant appropriate whilst the app should provide full immersion.

�� Conclusion

Virtual Reality is the next step towards modern improvement. This time around, our innovation will have made significant progress enough to help the requirements for these gadgets and will start executing Virtual reality inside homes, clinical focuses, and workplaces. The objective of Virtual Reality is to furnish a person with a Virtual Environment where everybody can collaborate with a PC similarly as in the genuine world, that is, by chatting with a virtual human in spoken language, by composing a letter, or by drawing a picture. Virtual Reality is one more advancement headway in new correspondence advances, besides, it has affected media outlets, the gaming scene, the instruction framework, and the clinical industry.

#virtual reality #information #technology

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Friday, April 30, 2021

Satellites show world’s glaciers melting faster than ever (AP) Glaciers are melting faster, losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier, according to three-dimensional satellite measurements of all the world’s mountain glaciers. Using 20 years of recently declassified satellite data, scientists calculated that the world’s 220,000 mountain glaciers are losing more than 328 billion tons (298 billion metric tons) of ice and snow per year since 2015, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature. That’s enough melt flowing into the world’s rising oceans to put Switzerland under almost 24 feet (7.2 meters) of water each year. Almost all the world’s glaciers are melting, even ones in Tibet that used to be stable, the study found. Except for a few in Iceland and Scandinavia that are fed by increased precipitation, the melt rates are accelerating around the world.

Biden Seeks Shift in How the Nation Serves Its People (NYT) President Biden laid out an ambitious agenda on Wednesday night to rewrite the American social compact by vastly expanding family leave, child care, health care, preschool and college education for millions of people to be financed with increased taxes on the wealthiest earners. Invoking the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Biden unveiled a $1.8 trillion social spending plan to accompany previous proposals to build roads and bridges, expand other social programs and combat climate change, representing a fundamental reorientation of the role of government not seen since the days of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal. Taken together, the collection of initiatives that Mr. Biden has introduced in his first 100 days in office suggest a breathtaking scope of change. But the succession of costly proposals amounts to a risky gamble that a country deeply polarized along ideological and cultural lines is ready for a more activist government and the sort of redistribution of wealth long sought by progressives. Mr. Biden’s Democrats have only the barest of majorities in the House and Senate to push through the most sweeping of legislation and, successful or not, he may have framed the terms of the debate for the next election.

Bioware (The Guardian) The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District and a company named Oxitec announced they will release 12,000 invasive Aedes aegypti mosquitoes each week for 12 weeks from six different locations on the Keys. The plan, which sounds like a Bond villain scheme while authorities insist it is definitely not, is a complicated biological counteroffensive against a bug responsible for spreading dengue, Zika and yellow fever. The mosquitos being released have been specially treated and are all male. When the genetically modified bugs mate with the wild local female mosquitoes, all the subsequent female offspring will be unable to reproduce, controlling the population of the worst pest on the planet. The Aedes aegypti in the Keys make up about 4 percent of the mosquito population, but are responsible for effectively all mosquito-borne disease.

EU Signs The Divorce Papers (NYT) The nearly five-year-long Brexit process has finally come to an exhausted end with a formal vote by the European Parliament (EP) to accept the part of the deal governing trade and customs issues and providing for zero tariffs and zero quotas. While the outcome was never seriously doubted, a ‘no’ vote by the EP would have killed the deal, which neither side wanted. Even so, the EP expressed considerable concerns about the trustworthiness of the current British government to carry out its side of the bargain. That includes the just approved trade deal, which still leaves out key issues like financial services and foreign and security policy. Brits voted to leave the EU in June 2016 after a campaign filled with exaggerations on both sides. Since then the struggle over how to define Brexit and Britain’s future relationship with the EU destroyed both prime ministerships of David Cameron and Theresa May. Boris Johnson is now running the show, and he’s had his own painful entanglements with the thorny issue of the border between Northern Ireland, a part of Britain, and the Republic of Ireland, a member of the EU.

Want a Peek at Post-Covid Life? Check Out Gibraltar (WSJ) On this strip of densely populated rock jutting into the Mediterranean Sea, people are tasting freedom. Gibraltar, population 34,000, has fully vaccinated around 85% of adults, its government says, and 98% of adults over 60. Gibraltar has been free of Covid-19 cases in its resident population since April 8. Gibraltar, twice Central Park’s size and dominated by a mountain known as The Rock, has embarked on “Operation Freedom,” a plan to fully reopen society while monitoring virus cases. With pandemic restrictions all but gone, its narrow streets and cafe-lined squares are showing life. On a recent evening, pedestrians walked arm-in-arm. Pubs and cafes were bustling with maskless patrons drinking and sharing bowls of bar snacks. “You are seeing people greet each other in the street, shaking hands, hugging for the first time in months,” says one resident, 61. “People are smiling.”

Bulgaria alleges Russian links to arms depot blasts, widening European probes into Moscow agents (Washington Post) Bulgarian prosecutors said Wednesday that they are looking at whether four explosions at weapons depots over the past decade are part of a Russian effort to disrupt the flow of arms from Eastern Europe to battlefields in Ukraine and Georgia. The investigations into the explosions, which took place between 2011 and 2020, are part of wider probes in Europe linked to suspected Russian military intelligence agents. Bulgaria’s announcement followed claims by Czech authorities last week that they suspect two agents from Unit 29155 in Russia’s GRU intelligence agency were linked to blasts at an arms warehouse in the Czech Republic in 2014. In Ukraine, government forces have been battling pro-Moscow separatists since 2014, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Young women, grown up without Taliban, dread their return (AP) Inside Ms. Sadat’s Beauty Salon in Afghanistan’s capital, Sultana Karimi leans intently over a customer, meticulously shaping her eyebrows. Make-up and hair styling is the 24-year-old’s passion, and she discovered it, along with a newfound confidence, here in the salon. She and the other young women working or apprenticing in the salon never experienced the rule of the Taliban over Afghanistan. But they all worry that their dreams will come to an end if the hard-line militants regain any power, even if peacefully as part of a new government. The Taliban banned beauty salons, part of a notoriously harsh ideology that often hit women and girls the hardest, including forbidding them education and the right to work or even to travel outside their home unaccompanied by a male relative. With U.S. troops committed to leaving Afghanistan completely by Sept. 11, women are closely watching the stalemated peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government over the post-withdrawal future, said Mahbouba Seraj, a women’s rights activist.

U.S. aid en route to India as new cases continue to break records (Washington Post) U.S. flights carrying urgent coronavirus aid for India were en route Thursday, the White House said in a statement, as health officials reported another record number of new cases across the country. The U.S. government will deliver more than $100 million worth of supplies for overstretched hospitals and front-line health-care workers in India, according to the White House. The State Department is urging U.S. citizens to leave India “as soon as it is safe to do” and to avoid traveling there, pointing to “severely limited” access to all kinds of medical care.

China’s Baby Bust (Foreign Policy) China is expected to report its first population decline since Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward in its latest census, which could spark a crisis moment in a country deeply worried about its aging demographics. After the one-child policy was formally lifted in 2015, the government hoped that a baby boom would follow, but the figures show it hasn’t materialized—because having kids in China is just too expensive. Censuses in communist countries have always been politically sensitive, since they often speak to failed policies or hidden disasters. Chinese officials have already delayed the release of the 2020 data—and it may later be buried, either not released or not covered by the media. China recorded more than 1.4 billion people in 2019, and a fall below that number will bring a significant moment closer: when India, with a population of 1.38 billion, officially becomes the world’s largest country. The population decline fundamentally reflects a simple reality, pandemic aside: Having children in China is expensive and burdensome. For the poor, the stress of separation from children due to labor migration, the difficulty of finding education or health care in big cities, and the impossibility of buying apartments—often a social requirement before marriage—present other obstacles.

China's space station (BBC) China launched the first piece of a new space station into orbit today. The Chinese Space Station will eventually be about a quarter of the size of the International Space Station and will have space to house three astronauts and a slew of low-gravity experiments. Beijing hopes to squeeze 10 more launches into the next 20 months and finish the project by the end of 2022. Chinese officials say the station will reserve space onboard for experiments from researchers all over the world—but geopolitical tensions will complicate. The US heavily restricts cooperation between NASA scientists and China, while the European Space Agency has reportedly pressured its researchers not to work with their Chinese counterparts.

Filipinos feel helpless against latest coronavirus surge (NYT) Grim tales are emerging in families across the Philippines, where Southeast Asia’s worst current outbreak has pushed total coronavirus cases beyond 1 million. Many who need treatment must be driven out of the capital, to hospitals as far as five hours away, as the health system buckles under the strain. The Philippines has recorded 16,000 deaths, with patients dying in their homes, on the road and sometimes right outside emergency room doors. Some private hospitals have turned to home care, remote consulting and recruiting health-care workers from the provinces. The Health Department is developing a home care package for patients with mild cases of covid-19.

Religious festival stampede in Israel kills 44, hurts dozens (AP) A stampede at a religious festival attended by tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews in northern Israel killed at least 44 people and injured about 150 early Friday, medical officials said. It was one of the country’s deadliest civilian disasters. The stampede began when large numbers of people thronged a narrow tunnel-like passage during the event, according to witnesses and video footage. People began falling on top of each other near the end of the walkway, as they descended slippery metal stairs, witnesses said. Video footage showed large numbers of people, most of them black-clad ultra-Orthodox men, squeezed in the tunnel. The Haaretz daily quoted witnesses as saying police barricades had prevented people from exiting quickly. The stampede occurred during the celebrations of Lag BaOmer at Mount Meron, the first mass religious gathering to be held legally since Israel lifted nearly all restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ethiopia detains Tigrayans amid war (AP) Ethiopia has swept up thousands of ethnic Tigrayans into detention centers across the country on accusations that they are traitors, often holding them for months and without charges, the AP has found. The detentions, mainly but not exclusively of military personnel, are an apparent attempt to purge state institutions of the Tigrayans who once dominated them, as the government enters its sixth month of fighting in the Tigray region. Detainees, families and visitors spoke of hundreds or even more than 1,000 people in at least nine individual locations, including military bases and an agricultural college. The arbitrary locking up of non-combatants is against international law, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has met with family members of detainees but declined to answer questions. Conditions vary, but some detainees are given just one meal a day and crowded dozens to a room in sweltering metal shelters, at a time when COVID-19 infections are rapidly rising in Ethiopia.

#headlines #news

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andreagilroy · 7 years ago

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Running With Runaways

It is hard to find a comic created in the past twenty years that I love as viscerally and purely as Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona’s initial run on Runaways. I don’t talk about it a lot, and in some sense that’s because I love it so much. It gives me pure joy. It was thus with great trepidation and some excitement I took the announcement of a Runaways TV adaptation. On the one hand, it’s a great property for such treatment. It’s funny, irreverent, and starts a Breakfast Club-like cast of likeable and superpowered teenagers in sun-soaked LA rebelling from their parents but doing it for moral, good reasons. There’s drama and romance, and BKV’s dialogue is, as always, really great. Oh, and there’s a dinosaur thrown in for good measure.

On the other hand, it’s a property that has suffered in the hands of other teams. Even Joss Whedon, who is known for writing teens with snarky dialogue, managed to mangle his run on the book (frankly, I don’t think he’s particularly good at writing for comics, but that’s another issue). Only Rainbow Rowell and Kris Anka’s brand new run has come close to the intangible magic produced by those initial 24 issues.

My initial reaction to the TV show was very mixed. I try to be open to the problems and opportunities afforded by adaptation between media, but…why weren’t they running away? Why were we spending so much time with the parents? Ariela Barer was great, but I was miffed that Gert wasn’t properly chubby. This is...

However, upon returning from the holidays, Shaun and I binged through the final three episodes last night, and I’ve been thinking about what makes the TV show different from the comic, as well as considering how the story the TV show is trying to tell serves the medium of television in a way the story the comic told served the medium of comics.

The comic version of Runaways is a pure, distilled concept: when you are a teenager, at some point or another you feel like your parents are the worst. What if you found out they actually were? Because Runaways takes place within the superhero genre, BKV was allowed to play with the broadest strokes of our understandings of morality—superheroes and supervillains. The parents in Pride aren’t just annoying or bad or difficult to understand, they are supervillains. This clever turn means the act of teenage rebellion, something relatively quintessential about growing up, changes from a universal experience into a moral imperative.

BKV gets a lot of praise for his writing, and rightly so. If you don’t know the name off hand you probably recognize some of his most famous creator-owned series: Ex Machina, Y the Last Man, Paper Girls, or a little book called Saga that everyone seems to like a lot. People tend to focus on his thoughtful characterization and his snappy dialogue and inventive plots. All of those things are true, and it’s one of the reasons he’s probably the closest thing the USA has to producing an answer to Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman. But the real key to why he’s one of our greatest comics writers—and why I compare him the Big Guy himself without being facetious or feeling that I’m really going too far afield—is the BKV really understands, loves, and knows that to do with genre. (I could go into a big rant about how Watchmen only works as a critique of superhero comics because the book and Moore love superhero comics so goddamn much…but I won’t. Not here.)

BKV understands that logic, morality, and consequences mean something different in a comic book superhero world; and that we respond to tales told in a comic book superhero world in a certain way. The seeming purity of the moral conscious of a superhero world is so simple and easy compared to the mental and emotional messiness of growing up. Thus the fantasy of Runaways for teen readers is as much becoming a superhero and being right (especially at the expense of your parents) as it is being in a world in which there is the moral and emotional clarity of a superhero’s mission.

The trick is, the moment the teens form their superhero group and become a superhero team, they discover the fantasy world is, in fact, endlessly complicated—probably even more complicated than their lives were before. Actual superheroes want to return them to their parents, or don’t trust them to be able to fend for themselves. (Molly especially learns to never meet her heroes.) Doing the right thing feels wrong, and doing the wrong thing feels right, or at least would be so much easier. Then there’s the pesky fact that they eventually learn why their parents did what they did. It’s still wrong, but are they willing to live with the consequences of what it means to do the right thing? If they don’t or can’t, how does that make them any different from their parents?

As they series goes on, the themes inevitably change—some of the characters have to become parents themselves (surrogate, to Molly, who is much younger in the comics), to form a new family and discover what that means on their own. They have to decide whether to submit to or defy well-meaning authority that they disagree with, not just actually evil super-villain parents. They have to learn, again and again, what it means to deal with the consequences of their decisions—especially poignant in that their rebellion was the consequence of their parents’ decisions.

Adrian Alphona’s art is also a huge part in the success of this run. His art is stripped down, with simple lines—a little scratchy at times, which is a nice counterpoint to the hyper-clean studio finish of many superhero books—but also cartoony and expressive. Like the early parts of the story, it is pure cartooning: great depth and skill hiding beneath a simple surface.

(Okay, so the above panel is from one of Takeshi Miyazawa’s fill-in issues; but I had to include it because it’s one of my favorite gags. The previous two are Alphona’s)

So now we come to the TV show. Everything about the show is less focused, and this is what really bothered me at first. The split attention between the parents and the kids seemed like a craven marketing ploy: we don’t know if this show is for teens or adults, so let’s make sure there’s something that appeals to both! The show spends so much time pushing (along with the kids) back and forth about whether we like their parents. Several are set up as more sympathetic than others (the Yorkes are always the least despicable in both comics and TV); there are big reversals and reveals. Especially in the early episodes, I wanted to scream, “They’re just murderers, leave them!”

The television show is indeed a superhero story, but it is not primarily a superhero story – not in the same way the comic is. No, it is primarily a teenage melodrama. That means the primary focus is no longer the fantasy or allegory in the same way it was with the superhero comic; the primary focus shifts to the interpersonal relationships and drama. This is not, of course, to say that the comic doesn’t focus on the relationships between the characters—simply that the driving force behind the comic, especially in the early issues, is the concept. It is only once the concept is established that the relationships truly have room to grow. In the TV show, on the other hand, the concept only has room to be explored once the relationships between the characters are fully established. Even genre television demands a certain verisimilitude because it has a real world with real people speaking the words of the script. It’s harder to get away with hand-waving genre tropes in TV, even for a period of time to ultimately undermine them, because they don’t make sense when there are living people involved, not drawn figures.

This is down to both genre and medium considerations. TV, and especially melodramatic TV, is good at lots and lots of scenes with characters talking about their feelings. Comics, especially in an action- and plot-oriented genre like the superhero genre, is not quite so good at lots of long, talky scenes. Part of this is, quite simply, practical: even the best funded TV shows don’t have the SFX budget or the freedom to use superheroes willy-nilly like the Runaways comic did. But I think the show runners shifted the focus to reflect the strengths of the medium.

What the TV show loses with the purity of the original concept, it makes up for with an emotional complexity regarding the parent-child relationship that the comic never really explores. I don’t think this is a weakness of the comic—it’s not what it wants to do. The comic uses the clarity of the moral imagination of the superhero fantasy to examine the messy contradictions of growing up. The TV immediately complicates the morality on both sides, and forces us to wonder what it means to desire the superhero’s moral clarity in the “real” world. Thus the show is more directly about growing up, just with the emotional stakes ratcheted up to 11. It’s no longer just the case that you become a different person from your parents, find your own voice and beliefs, and begin to form new bonds outside of the family home--no, these kids have to make a new family caring for a younger kid and draw a line in the sand that forces them to fully confront their differences with the parents head-on. It’s not an awkward Thanksgiving dinner conversation at stake, but the fate of the world.

Which brings us to the emphasis on the parents. For this to work, the parents can’t be one-dimensional villains, or the stakes are too low. I don’t think the show wants us to completely forgive the parents for the murders, but it does want us to think about what might push otherwise good people, and even good parents (in the case of about 80% of them, at least), to do really terrible things. We may roll out eyes at Chase for continuing to hope his father is savable, but is it ultimately that much different than thinking the Yorkes aren’t really that bad because they clearly feel bad about what they’ve done? In the end, all of the members of Pride found something they’re willing to kill for—and it wasn’t their kids. They entered into their bargain before they had kids. Power, knowledge, freedom…even if they had good intentions for that power or knowledge—that’s what they were willing to bargain with Jonah for.

In the final handful of episodes, I think another of the show writers’ intentions with the parents became clearer: to juxtapose the made family of the kids with the made family of the parents. A major running theme of both series is that “family” is what you make of it—the Runaways really are a family. Though it might’ve been an evil alien that brought them together, Pride is a group of people who have been with each other through pretty-much everything for almost twenty years. They’re a family, too—even if they don’t like each other much any more. There are friendships and rivalries, and the way the group splinters and reforms in the face of betrayal was interesting to watch…especially in juxtaposition with the kids’. *Soft-spoiler note: if you’ve read the comics, you know that a betrayal is likely coming for the kids, too. Thus, I was particularly interested to see how Pride responded to Leslie’s reveal and attempt to re-join the group.

I have no snappy conclusion except to say that I have come, over the course of the series, to appreciate the adaptation for several reasons—perhaps the biggest of which is that, by beings the-same-but-different it helped me articulate what I thought was particularly powerful and effective about the original comic. I’ve tried to teach the original comic before, and it’s proven incredibly difficult—I think because it’s deceptively simple. I will end with another pitch for Rainbow Rowell and Kris Anka’s ( @kristaferanka ) new run on the book—especially since Marvel tends to cancel books that don’t sell well. You do at least need to read BKV’s original run (#1-24), but you really should do that anyway.

I found most of the gifs on @runawaysource - they are not mine.

#comics #comics studies #runaways

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madegeeky · 5 years ago

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Giftening 2020: Obligatory Vote for These Post (spoiler version)

Want the non-spoilery version? Seriously, though, super spoilery for main plot points for a lot of these. Skip the ones you don’t want to know about.

Ones with * are my nominations, so you know where my biases lie. :P Ones in bold are my top pick for the categories. I did not include things that don’t need the boost (like Utena).

ANIME

Aggretsuko - A tv show about an unassuming shy red panda woman who works in an office building and deals with the stress of it by going to karaoke and screaming out death metal. The show largely deals with her making friends with two women who she admires and a dude who likes her. The dude who likes her is actually a geniunely interesting storyline because at the end of the first season (which I’ve not seen beyond), he basically admits that he’s built this image of her in his head that isn’t real and he wants to know the real her. (Which, fuck yeah.)

Fushigi Yuugi* - This is a story about two teens who used to be friends fighting over a man which is literally the antithesis of everything Jet is. And yet, Jet watched the whole damn thing. Watch her squirm as she has to deal with that in a liveblog format. You can get a preview of some of that in Doc’s liveblog of it that she did for Jet.

NON-ANIME ANIMATED

Archer* - This is an animated parody of James Bond made for adults. It's offensive as fuck because Archer, the titular character, is a James Bond stand-in and that character can also be offensive as fuck. In fact, one thing to appreciate about this show is that all the characters are shitty, awful people and the show never attempts to excuse their shitty, awful behavior. Plus, it's one of the few shows where half the main characters are women. I am a tiny bit hesitant to rec this for a liveblog due to the offensivness however, as far as I can tell it's not popular on tumblr, and those are generally the ones that cause the most trouble so...

Daria - The story of a misanthropic teenager, her family, and her best friend. The characters are specifically meant to appear to be tropes before slowly being unveiled as three dimensional people. It's got a dry sense of humor that I think Jet will enjoy. I actually didn't know until years after I watched this that it was a spin-off of Beavis and Butthead (which I hated) so don't let that dissuade you.

LIVE ACTION

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - I haven't seen past a certain point because it starts going super deep into exploring depression and that is one of my main triggers for a depressive episode, so I cannot speak of later eps. However, this show starts out funny and silly and evolves into a show exploring how toxic the main character actually is and how unhealthy her coping mechanisms are. It's amazing to see a character type whose actions are usually excused or written off as funny instead be specifically called out as being awful and toxic. (It was a Shit Show is still one of the best songs I've ever heard and Mr. Geeky and I sing it to each other whenever shit hits the fan.)

Hannibal* - If you know of Hannibal, you know the basics premise is that of a man who eats people and is chased by the FBI. The writing in this is some of the best writing I've ever had the pleasure of seeing in a piece of media: it's subtle, smart, and trust its audience to follow along without having their hand held. However, what's really great about the TV show is that it's not afraid to do its own thing. It constantly fucks with your expectations and deconstructs and explores tropes in ways I've never seen before. I haven't seen the ending yet but I highly doubt it's going to end in a place where Silence of the Lambs will happen. The acting is fucking great and even though Anthony Hopkins gives an amazing performance as Hannibal Lector, after seeing Mads Mikkelsen play him there's no going back to Hopkins. In general, if you're looking for something original (which is ironic considering it's based on a book and there are several movies) and smart, I cannot recommend this enough.

Russian Doll* - (Doc, please skip this one, as in 5 years when you're done with Two Storms, this is one of the things I'm considering nominating should I ever win a liveblog again.) I don't really know how to explain this show because it's so fucking weird and is so focused on character and ideas that the plot is both super simple and extremely complicated. It's a story about a woman who starts to relive the same day over and over again except, instead of the typical thing where it starts over when she falls asleep, it's only until she dies (so sometimes she lasts for hours, other times for a couple days). However, almost immediately there are signs that something else is going on, that something outside of the main character's repeating day, something has gone horribly wrong. (Count the fish.) It's a very thoughtful, character-driven show, more about exploring ideas than plot which I, personally, didn't mind at all. Another one I highly recommend overall with much less blood and gore than Hannibal.

Xena - IT'S FUCKING XENA PEOPLE! Okay, but just in case you don't know what the show is about is through cultural osmosis, Xena is a show about a woman who used to be a truly horrible murderous bitch and her continual attempts to make up for the wrongs she has done. The main relationship in the show is between Xena and her (girl)friend, Gabriel, and although the show can be ridiculously silly (time is made up and history doesn’t matter!), it also explores deep, dark issues. One of the best things this show explores is the idea of redemption and forgiveness and that perhaps nothing Xena does will ever get her those things.

LIVESTREAM

Crank* - Jason Statham plays a man who has been given a poison that slowly cuts off his adrenaline, meaning that eventually he'll die. He has to do increasingly ludicrous things to get his adrenaline pumping overtime to make up for it slowly being cut off. It's one of the most fucking bananas thing you'll ever watch but is just a bunch of fucking fun. (CW: Public sexual assault. I only mentioned because it’s a scene that last for a bit. It's a complicated scene so I won't get into it here but send an ask if you want more details.)

Dale and Tucker vs Evil* - Dale and Tucker, two hillbilly best friends, are going into the woods to fix up their vacation home when they stumble across some college kids. Random circumstances make the college kids think D&T have kidnapped their friend and so they decide they need to attack D&T to get her back. Hijinx ensue. I don't want to say much more because there's a moment that is, to this day, still one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen, largely because I did not see it coming.

GAMES

Doki Doki Lit Club - This is a game about games. You play a guy in a dating sim. Your first playthrough everything seems normal enough. You join the literature club, meet and talk to girls, and then one of the girls commits suicide. And then game restarts and the girl who committed suicide just... doesn't exist anymore. Your replay the exact same days but it's as though she never existed. Things only get weirder from there. This game does a great job of turning dating sim tropes on their head, as well as exploring games in general. (Content warning for a lot of things. Let me know if you want more details.)

Slime Rancher (stream) - There's really not much to spoil here. You play a woman who is in charge of a ranch full of slimes. There's some messages you'll find, left by the old owner, telling story about their romance. There also some messages between you character and a deliberately gender-ambiguous significant other. And that's about the closest to story you get. Otherwise it's just catching and ranching slimes.

Subnautica* - Fucking fuck I love this game. When this game first starts it appears to be your typical survival game with no real direction other than what you want to explore. But then you find an alien structure. And you realize that your spaceship didn't randomly crash. And you find out that there's no way get off this planet except to explore deeper and deeper and find out what the aliens were doing on this planet. A genuinely beautiful story, told mostly through entries in data pads and voice messages left behind, this ending is one of the most moving ends I've ever experienced and I never ever would have expected to be able to say that about a survival game.

We Happy Few* - In this alternate universe, the Germans invaded Britain during WW2 (although, through exploring the world, you learn that the differences started well before that). When the story starts up, the Germans have left Britain behind and Britain, for unknown reasons, appears to be cut off and/or abandoned by the rest of the world. The majority of the country is constantly hopped up on a drug called Joy, which is specifically used to help them forget something horrible that happened in the past. (I have theories.) The story starts when your character goes off his Joy and gets kicked out of society. There's a general sense of unease about everything and the more you learn the more that unease grows. The art style is great and the world building fascinating.

MISC (there’s nothing spoilery here but it feels weird to not have it)

Interactive Horror Story Livestream - Doc has talked a bit about this in at least one of her Xmas streams and it sounds amazing. Not only is Jet hilarious with horror stuff but knowing Doc’s writing skill, it will be something that we’d never want to miss.

Bean Boozle When Failing a Hard Game* - I am a sadistic bitch, I admit to this, and I love watching people eat Bean Boozle, the jelly bean of horrible flavors. One of my favorite videos content creators has done is playing an incredibly difficult game and then being forced to eat a random one every time they fail.

#giftening 2020 #giftening recs #spoilers for jetwolf

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dreamernobody979 · 6 years ago

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No Going Back Now: Fighting White Supremacy as a Black Follower of Christ

The task and call on the table: Deconstructing Institutional Racism, Structural Racism and how it expresses itself in higher education. This includes how seemingly normal, neutral and unbiased rules, codes, guidelines and policies disproportionately disadvantage people of color on this campus. I guess I should specify that I’m talking about LBC. It would be easy for to go after society as a whole and examine how these principles play out in the general American higher education system. Seeing the different mechanisms of racially coded language, the erasure of blackness through curriculum that centers whiteness, non stop promotion of predominantly euro-centric heroes, teachers, musicians, poets, preachers, scientists, doctors, lawyers and other professionals in society that all work together to dehumanize black and brown humanity is hard enough. But seeing the evil of this system, trying to point it out to people with more power and influence than me and having them willfully deflect and kindly refuse not to see it is infuriating. I feel as if I see the smog of poisonous gas permeating the classrooms, soaking into the assigned reading in each class, staining the walls of chapel, distorting the features of the students, warping the text of the scriptures, slowly eating away at the skin of black and brown students and no one will listen or can even understand it. We are dying not just here but in society as a whole from the poison of white supremacy.

It is frightening and if I wasn’t a Christian, if I didn’t believe Jesus that you were greater than any evil that is in this world, even the insidious and pervasive yet subtle evil of white supremacist ideology, I would give in to complete, utter and permanent fear and despair. It’s for that reason that James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Malcolm X surprise me. I feel bad for saying that, I mean all of their books are on my reading list so I still don’t fully know where they found their hope but I’m gonna assume (which is usually a bad thing to do but I will this once) that they were not Christians. I am sure that Malcolm X wasn’t and for that, I cannot blame him. I wish that he could’ve known the true and living Christ behind the smoggy, subtle and idolatrous white Jesus that he certainly met in his lifetime. But anyway....I just wonder where their hope came from....how they continued to fight against this evil. I mean I know that this is largely an issue of social structures of injustice. Man made and insidious. But I also know that there’s a spiritual element to this evil too....there is no way that I as a follower of Christ and Your Word could think that such a pervasive, systemic and enduring evil as racism has no roots in the demonic realm. If not the man made structures than certainly the ideology of whiteness and white supremacy on which racism rests is evil beyond human ability to fight.

Oh Heavenly Father....I am one woman. You ask me to stay here....it seems like if I stay here I will be giving up. I don’t know how to explain it to you or anyone else but I cannot knowingly stay in a place where no one is willing to confront the ugly reality in front of them. I would be wasting my effort, time and energy on people that are not ready to confront their complicity, their racism, their acquiescence to injustice. Staying would be like telling them “I agree with you” If I have no agency as a black woman to set my boundaries, declare what I need and reasonably hold people accountable for their actions, and I stay....Lord what kind of example does that set? That goes against everything you taught me over the past few years. It’s unhealthy, it’s dysfunctional to think that if I just martyr myself at the altar of their ignorance that they (read: white people) will eventually understand. Look I’m not saying I don’t want to follow your will and stay....ok I don’t wanna stay here but you’ve known that since last summer that’s nothing new. But let’s get one thing straight and this is something that’s been frustrating me for awhile: there seems to be a misunderstanding and spiritual minimization of the suffering and pain that people of color endure from racism and how we are expected to respond. I don’t know if this narrative of redemptive black suffering has come from the suffering of Christ or the collective suffering of black people throughout history in their relentless fight for dignity, equity and respect but there’s something in there that is subtle and dangerous.

I am not against suffering for Christ’s sake but suffering persecution from other Christians. And then there’s this expectation that people who are being abused should just take it and endure it for the sake of unity, progress, peace and forgiveness. In this case i will speak of black women. There’s this narrative that black women exist for the sole purpose of being the pack mules for everyone’s suffering, the female messiahs of society’s burden and are just simply made to endure constant disrespect and shame without complaint. The narrative of “the strong black woman” impervious to pain and weakness, never gives up, is superwoman and has no need for breaks or protection. She capes for everyone, fights for everyone, never rests, always fights, and society seems very comfortable with this concept of black women enduring pain for others. The black community does this as well. I can’t speak on the collective behavior of everyone in the African diaspora but as an African American I see a strong resistance to admitting weakness, vulnerability and fear in the black community. There is this ideas that “No matter how bad things get, especially in the face of racism, we can’t get mad, we can’t leave, we can’t feel we have to get through it and rise above.” And the clear understanding of what success looks like seems to always be “Stay in the racist environment and be the champion and go in and change things, no matter the cost. Don’t think about your own needs as an individual, you are always representing the group, you have no right to your own health, boundaries nor do you have the right to say no. You must always be there for everyone else and never ask for anything for yourself. Self care is selfishness. And besides even if you left, everywhere you go you’ll encounter racism so you just gotta learn to deal with it”

I think the resolution of black people to endure horrific cruelty and dehumanization both overtly and covertly throughout history is amazing. However I think we need to realize that although we are amazing we are not super humans nor do we always have to pretend to be. In embracing the stereotype of “limitless strength and endurance: i.e- strong black man/woman/etc, we in essence don’t allow ourselves to say no, that’s enough, stop, I’m wounded, I need/want, I’m not okay. In a society and a world that never allows us to have a break, I think it’s important as oppressed people to create spaces and pockets of humanity for ourselves which includes supporting each other when we are weak and not shaming each other or judging someone’s blackness because they choose to not fight. I think asserting our right to not engage with trying to fix racists/racism (which by the way is the job of white people) we are fighting a different kind of battle. We are reclaiming out three dimensional humanity. We are saying “I have the right to take care of myself, I am not the prop for every cause, I am human and I cannot always be strong, sane, “coherent” or “on”. And that’s ok. ....we are humans.

It is ok to be soft, to be weak, to be vulnerable and fight for your right to say no. No, I do not owe anyone my time and energy, No it is not my job or responsibility to fix the racist environment on your campus that you created and refuse to acknowledge. No it is not my job to suffer, cry, email, scream and tear my 4C hair out every day trying to fix your school for now pay, 20,000 in debt and failing all my classes. I have the right to not share my experiences, emotional baggage and racial trauma and I don’t have to stay in an environment with people who refuse to see me. I don’t have to write proposals, meet with white RA’s, professors, staff and board members and splay open my pain for their curious perusal. It is perfectly right and reasonable for me to hold people in power responsible for doing their own labor to deconstruct the injustice system they are complicit in maintaining in thousands of ways.

I think I am doing the best I can to set an example for other people of color and the example is this: You do not have to endure your education and you have every right to be here. You are a student the same as everyone else. Don’t ever let anyone use you as a token for their agenda at the expense of your dignity, voice and agency. They are lucky to have you not the other way around. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re demanding or aggressive for holding them accountable for their words and promises. And don’t EVER EVER EVER let anyone shame you for your response to racism or judge the extent of your racial trauma. Do what you need to do to heal and if that looks like leaving the environment then so be it. If anyone has a problem with you or questions your character for leaving, you tell them you have every right to leave a dysfunctional environment where the company was not delivering the product they advertised. And if they still wanna criticize you more than the discrimination that brought about your response, tell them to come to me. I’ve had it with the policing by both white people and people of color, of each other’s reactions and coping mechanisms in the face of institutionalized injustice (racism, sexism, able-ism,etc) Stop with the respectability politics and stop with the criticizing of the traumatized. It is healthy to acknowledge and deal with your pain before attempting to help others. The problem with the world is you have sick people helping sick people. Wanna humanize people of color? Let them know it’s ok to feel pain when they’ve been hurt, that they are intelligent and capable of properly perceiving discrimination and remind them that the systemic minimization of their humanity is not normal, natural or acceptable. Help them find their voice on their termsl.

#christian #blackwoman #PWI #christianschool #equity #pain #whitesupremacy

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