#all of those are technically only in spirit but this is explicitly discussing them so... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

steveyockey · 4 years ago

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Regarding how Supernatural sees and literally portrays its own fans: there are the cringy loser man (who also turn out to be gay which is of course even worse), the straight fetishizing women and the delusional queer fangirls. What I don't understand: where are the fans that Supernatural actually wants? The 'real' fans, the actual target group, so I suppose cool straight dude bros? They're never shown as fans of the show! Because how Supernatural portrays is, it's actually cringe to like Supernatural at all which is funnily just the show shitting on itself (and also true). Or what do you think?

I mean I think you hit the nail on the head, it’s cringe to like supernatural! specifically it’s cringe to like supernatural with a passion, which is funny because like, kripke’s original pitch mentions buffy, the x-files, star wars, properties with active fan communities who rooted for pairings and continue to write fic. it feels like those fans come with the territory! it’s genre fiction! but of course supernatural also came up at the perfect time for its writers to have a better awareness of their fan communities than most of the stuff that came before them, and, what’s more is they chose to do that. becky, demian, and barnes are all names of forum mods from back in the day. they’re mean-spirited caricatures, but they are also currency! in-text acknowledgment! that’s a powerful drug. how mad can you be that you’re getting made fun of for having no life outside a silly tv show that thinks you’re a loser when you’re now a character in that tv show!

it’s difficult to source who supernatural was technically supposed to be for, there’s no actual quote of kripke naming teenage white boys as his target audience, but I did dig up this bad boy from 2009 that suggests dawn ostroff (the cw’s president at the time) was not happy the property pitched as being for males ages 13-25 was instead attracting women 14-45. I mean, we know the first two seasons of supernatural were “the DVDs most requested by armed forces personnel in iraq and afghanistan,” so clearly on some level the “intended audience” was being reached, but it seems at least the perception on the inside was those poor boys were getting massively outflanked by women. there’s a couple levels to this. first of all, the show premiered on the wb. it’s not to say the network couldn’t attempt to attract new viewers (and this was probably part of the intent of the show), but teen soaps were in its dna. they had no way to STOP the women already tuning in for gilmore girls from keeping the tv on another hour. second, though the show is purportedly “about” topics that read as exclusive to men (cars, rock, violence), there’s an obvious appeal to people attracted to men in its casting choices and the way its shot. like jensen didn’t do that fucking titantic necklace ad because he’s the epitome of masculinity, he did it because he was an androgynous dicaprio-type cutie! sure, his look may have been aspirational to teenage boys wanting that same type of attention, but again, there’s no way to prevent women from getting it directly from the source! and for all the show claims to tell us about the single man tear stoicism of it all, dean cries like a little bitch. because he’s not the action hero, not at first! he’s a scared kid who was forced to grow up. and sam’s fucking dean from gilmore girls! he’s got the bangs and the goofy smile! these aren’t the guys the women watching wanted protecting them, they were guys they wanted to provide comfort. and the camera plays into it! as our good friend sheila o’malley puts it, jensen and jared “are objectified in a way usually reserved for female stars.” you can discuss this in terms of a male objectification fantasy, there’s a wonderful post out there equating the compromising positions sam and dean find themselves in on hunts to a sort of bodice-ripper erotic thrill in being taken control of, but that only provides more space for the comfort fantasy. and this is nothing to say of just being interested in the genre! that the attention of female fans is devalued and assumed to have less complexity than the relationship men have to their beloved works. which is CRAZY because lgbt fans and women in fandom are the entire reason supernatural even made it this far! yes, there are swaths of “regular” people at home who watched supernatural in a non-obsessive way, but they weren’t the reason the show saw a 27 percent increase in its audience over the ninth season. that’s passionate fans, and fan communities encouraging passionate fans of other things to join them. supernatural might not have explicitly wanted these fans, but they are the reason for its success at almost any stage of the show’s airing and, while they may have been creating fanwork outside the bounds of the text, their reasons for coming to the show were not invented. what gets me riled up about “fan fiction” is I enjoy 99% of it, the one thing I can’t stand being the suggestion that what the fans are doing is based on a reading of the show the text itself doesn’t support. the text supports it because YOU put it there! just like you put everything else there that already made the show appeal to people outside the “target” audience! all of which is to say. I don’t know who the fuck supernatural was meant for. I don’t really care except in the moments it illuminates something within the text for me or when this idea is wielded effectively in the “ring ring! eric!” type jabs on here. because the show had the audience it had! it didn’t have any other! it took all that fucking con money and continues to do so, I don’t think there’s any better metric than cold hard cash.

#honestlyhaunted #every day i say i will not do fandom studies. and then i do fandom studies. well #spn #answered #rereading this sheila piece before i post it and like wow. this woman makes me feel deeply normal #i understand i am ignoring something here and i am choosing to ignore it so if you send me an ask like 'also this' well. i'll ignore that

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wutheringmights · 3 years ago

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I just read the newest chapter and I loved it! ♥ ♥ ♥ I was wondering if you had some hcs about the engineer that you could share?

Awww I'm glad you like it! I just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out what "HCS" meant before realizing I'm a tired idiot who can't read lol

But yeah! I got some headcanons for the engineer/Spirits I can share!

These headcanons are a mix of things I generally believe for any iteration of the Hero of Spirits and a few things exclusive to CTB. It's pretty obvious which are which.

Technically this is slight spoilers since most of this is not mentioned in-story, but Warriors is a such a self-centered asshole that I'm not sure when I can get him to explicitly ask about Spirit's backstory lol

This got super long and kind of just became me talking about Spirits's entire backstory, so enjoy:

Spirits is sixteen during the course of Spirit Tracks, mostly because that was the vibe I got from him when I first played the game (I made him younger for CTB)

He's not descendant from Wind (who I maintain disappeared instead of settling in New Hyrule); instead, he's Aryll's great grandson

His family name used to be Outset, but when everyone who originally immigrated from Outset island took on that last name, they changed it to Aryll to reflect the family matriarch

So Spirit's full name is Link Aryll, though there is a branch of his family that uses Macaryll instead

The Aryll/Macaryll family is huge; everyone has at least six aunts and uncles on all sides of the family and they can trace back how they are related to Aryll

"I'm Grandma Aryl's third son's second daughter's fifth child." -someone Spirits is related to, probably

He actually never met his great grandmother; she died before he was born.

Spirit's dad was full-blooded Lokomo while his mother was Hylian; his mother passed a few months after he was born after never truly recovering from childbirth while his father died in a fishing accident when he was eight

He went to live with an aunt and uncle who owned a general store; their relationship was polite at best. The aunt and uncle told Spirits upfront that they intended to give the store over to his cousin when he was older so Spirits needed to come up with his own life plan

Spirits didn't necessarily mind since he never wanted to work in a store for the rest of his life, but the ultimatum made it clear that they didn't care for him like a son

To this day, their relationship isn't strained and he doesn't hate them. But whenever they meet, he's overly polite; they're more acquaintances than family

He's cool with his cousin though. They have different interests so they aren't best friends, but they're okay.

Spirits also always had his spirit-sensing abilities. It's really like a sixth sense to him, as normal and automatic as seeing and hearing; he actually didn't realize this wasn't normal until he was a little older

His abilities at this point are limited to sensing vague ideas of a person's spirit (if they're light or dark, etc.), and seeing ghosts (which are really rare. You have to have a lot of power yourself to become one)

(Note: I'm not the only one who headcanons Spirits as having spirit sensing abilities; if you know who can up with the idea, please let me know so that I can tag/credit them!)

The elder of his village told him that select Lokomo had minor spirit sensing abilities, and those who did were traditionally made elders of their villages; being more of a follower than a leader, Spirits adamantly dismissed that idea and refused to be trained on how to hone his spirit senses. He also never learned any of the religion behind it

Which was a little worrisome since his abilities are way stronger than most

Besides, he's always liked trains and it's been his dream to travel around the kingdom as an engineer; being some town's elder would get in the way of that

Anyway, Spirits had to pass a written exam before being accepted as an apprentice engineer, so he's very studious and has a lot of drive (pun unintended?)

He went to live with his Uncle Niko during his apprenticeship in another town; Niko isn't related to him, but he's been a friend of the family for so long that everyone secretly thinks he's actually related to someone and they just forgot who

Niko is his real family, hands down. Those two are as thick as thieves and bring out the wild side in each other

A preteen Spirits used to think Niko was a little lame and kind of embarrassing, but now that he's older, he's all for Niko's weird old man-ness and has even picked up on some of his weird old man-ness himself

That being said, they're both disasters. Neither can clean or cook or do any kind of housekeeping and their shared house is cluttered with Niko's art projects and Spirit's half-finished tinkering

Growing up, Spirits had no idea he was related to the legendary Hero of Wind; Aryll died before he was born, but even in life she was filled with too much grief over her missing brother to discuss it often. Within the family, being related to the Hero of Wind is a rumor at best.

Of course, Niko knows but keeps it a secret from Spirits; once he got back from his LU-adventure, Wind told Niko about the curse of the Hero's Spirit. Then he went missing post-New Hyrule's founding, which really drove the terror of the curse home. Niko thought he could keep Wind's family from falling victim to it by not inadvertently encouraging them to follow in Wind's footsteps

So Niko kept it a secret

And obviously, that didn't work

Spirits' quest to save New Hyrule resulted in him realizing that he needed to embrace his Lokomo heritage and get a handle on his spirit powers; Anjean gave him a little training during his quest but afterwards he traveled around the kingdom to find as many people as he could with abilities like his

They were all really excited to teach him what they knew, especially the religious aspects of the abilities; Spirits is still not the most religious person, but he at least understands and embraces the cultural significance of what he is able to do

This is where he learned how to read a person's Spirit to get an idea of their life experiences and the kind of person they're like; he can also detect where a person is without having to put much effort into it

At Zelda's encouragement, he also got more sword training from the Castle Guard. She offered him a place among them, but he turned it down in favor of remaining an engineer. He still helps around as a swordsman when he can and will act as Zelda's body guard

Speaking of which, he and Zelda are 100% in love. Their relationship started out as puppy love but over the years as matured into a deep connection built on mutual respect

When he's working on designing new engines or parts for his trains, he occasionally brings his drafting materials to the castle gardens so that he can work alongside Zelda; sometimes she falls asleep leaning against his arm and he has to be careful not to shake her awake as he works

Whenever she need to go anywhere in the kingdom, she rides in his train and teasingly criticizes his conducting; he takes a lot of pride in his conducting, but he lets her get away with it since her critiques are objectively hilarious

He keeps a tiny pictograph of her taped to his dashboard

But there's a bit of a problem with their relationship, and it's that he doesn't know if he wants to be the prince consort or not. He does love her, but that would mean giving up being an engineer in favor of being stuck at the castle all of the time

Plus, he's doing great as an engineer; he's saving up to open his own garage that produces his own train designs

Eventually, he leaves for the War of Eras

His experiences with Warriors leaves him more sure than ever that he doesn't want to be the prince consort, resulting in him ending his relationship with Zelda shortly after he returns home

It hurts for a long time to be around her since all of his old feelings keep coming back, so he keeps his distance for a long time; it takes a few years for him to go back to hanging out with Zelda as friends

But now she's approaching marriage age, and he spends a lot of time when he's on body guard duty super jealous of these princes and ambassadors from foreign kingdoms who try to court her

But again, he knows he can't be in a relationship with her so he respectfully and silently pines over her (I'm just a sucker for pining, okay?)

Okay, more random headcanons that are a little less sad

Spirits likes super spicy food, but since he can't cook to save his own life, he just eats whatever he can get his hands on

He's super dirty all of the time, just the epitome of scrappy; there's always a smear of oil somewhere on his person

He actually really hates bathing and only keeps his curly hair in check to comply with train safety regulations

He's really polite and a little shy, but once he loosens up, he gets talkative and personable

He's also very contemplative; he likes conducting so much because he gets to spend long stretches of time alone with nothing but his thoughts

His trauma/stress response is to shut down; he goes quiet, loses energy, and sleeps for longer periods of time

He tends to gravitate towards socializing with people who are older than him, which gets him labeled as being no fun by his peers (despite having someone as cooky as Niko for a uncle)

Post-adventure, his best friend is Linebeck III. They're drinking buddies. Neither can really explain why they even like hanging out as much as they do

(I just like the idea of Linebeck accidentally getting attached to one kid and his whole bloodline getting forever tangled with Wind's; they're bros for multiple lifetimes)

Not only is Spirits good at designing and building new machinery, but he's great at tinkering; he can fix almost anything and will buy broken things on purpose just to have something to fix

No one really knows he's a hero; he doesn't like the attention and, at his request, Zelda did her best to keep his involvement with Malladus a secret

Because not many common people know about his adventure and records of New Hyrule are very rare, he's considered in Warrior's time to be a forgotten hero; some scholars believe that a Hero of Spirits may have once existed, but if he did, no one really knows who he was or what he did to serve the bloodline of Hylia

#god this got long but i hope you like reading them anon!#I just have a lot of thoughts about spirits #so many thoughts #linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu #lu headcanon #lu spirits #loz st #legend of zelda #spirit tracks link #zelink #ask #anonymous #me rambling #lu ctb #loz

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maliciouslycreative · 3 years ago

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How I played damage control to an anti in a small anime fandom and may have led to her ultimate downfall

I know I had a really nice write up of this at one point but oh well. I’ll spill more of the tea in this one because honestly the tea was so hot.

There are a few things that I have to give context to first. Gaia online was like THE mega forum of the 2000s, you made a little avatar and through posting and doing other activities on the forum you made money to buy clothes for your avatar. There were forums for everything but the fannish portions were really what drew in most of the people. The anime I was into was Beyblade. It was a shonen anime about fighting with tops that were possessed by the spirits of magical creatures. The story was honestly pretty average but the characters were fantastic and the fandom is to this day still one of my favourites. The series had a primarily male cast and didn’t even have a female lead until the second season. This led to the fanfic for the English fandom being about 70% canon/OC, 10 % canon m/f, and 20% slash. The most popular character in the English fandom was by far Kai Hiwatari, the loner badboy of the team.

Also before we get started I would like to add that one of my best friends was neck deep in this and the two of us were more or less fandom married. This is the same friend that I fake dated, had feelings for, and she nearly got me into kpop in 2011 so like if you haven’t read that story please read it too because it will give you a good idea of how stupid I am and how much of a fanfic I have truly lived.

To set the stage I was 16, soon to be 17 when I joined the fandom and it was 2004. In September of that year I wrote a humour longfic that became an absolute smash hit and I found myself somehow fandom famous. It was around this time that I joined Gaia online. I made my little avatar and immediately went looking for the beyblade thread so that I could make new friends. I found the main thread, made my little introduction and at the end of it mentioned that I was a slash writer but I supported all ships. This is where I met C. She had declared herself the authority on Beyblade in these parts and I had just committed the crime of mentioning slash which was very obviously not canon and we did not discuss in this thread because we only discussed canon things. I was like well that’s a bit severe but like sure whatever I just want to hang out and have fun.

Oh boy did I have no idea what I was in for.

C was a year older than me and unfortunately that made her older than the majority of the fans at the time. Her favourite character was Kai, and she was not shy about talking about this fact. She stanned Kai above all other characters, and often at their expense. She was also a fanfic writer of a popular canon/OC series. Actually, she was so full of herself that she didn’t even call herself a fanfic writer, no her stories were in fact novels and were apparently very good. I never read them. But more on that later.

Eventually the slash fans got tired of her being rude to us in the general thread so we made a Beyblade slash thread. There was a core of like 8 or so of us and we honestly had sooo much fun. When C would be too unbearable in the main thread the people from there used to come over to our thread and we’d chat with them about non slash stuff because we were honestly all multishippers and just wanted to have fun. We’d get comments like “wow, I’ve had more pleasant canon het ship discussions in the slash thread than the regular thread”. We never worried about C coming over and getting upset about comments like this because she refused to be associated with anything related with slash lmao.

I tried my best to keep the peace between C, myself, and the rest of the fandom because ultimately I hate being in fandom drama. I just want everyone to have a good time. I’m a people pleaser. Unfortunately my newfound fame put me in the awkward position of being the most fandom popular person in our small community aside from C. Virtually every fan that read fanfics that came into our thread knew one of us or the other by reputation and C HATED this. Especially because people would come in to the thread, recognise me and go “oh my goodness I love your fanfics!” and I’d be super sweet with them and it’d lead into “I can’t believe how nice you are, I love you” which would lead to us crying at each other. This was not the kind of fan interaction that C got, no her fans were more kind that were there to praise her and worship her like a deity that had blessed them with some gift. Rarely did they tell her how kind she was.

Back in the mid 2000s there were really commonly those commercials (usually by Christian organisations) asking people to sponsor say children in Africa or to help build schools or provide drinking water. You all probably know the ones; know the language that they used in those commercials. My fandom wife, who I suppose I shall call wifey because yes we were THAT couple back then, once said that C described her fics like those people described donating money to save the lives of Children in Africa. So we used to joke that her fics were so good they’d save lives in Africa. Looking back at it all, she almost had a very fundamentalist Christian approach to bringing people into her fanfics. She of course tried to get all the slash people into reading it. None of us read canon/oc fic mostly due to our poor treatment at the hands of their fans and creators. Getting fed up I one day told her that if she would read any one of my fanfics that I would read the entirety of her novels. Yes, I was willing to commit to read a couple 100k of canon/oc fanfic that I’d never touch normally if she would even read one of my 1k 1 shots. Heck, I had a fic even that shipped 2 minor characters so she didn’t even have to sully herself reading about one of the main characters. It was honestly a good deal in her favour. I kept this up until the day we all left the fandom. Sometimes I do wonder if her fics were even ¼ as good as she claimed, but I will never know because she refused to read my fics.

She wasn’t all bad and a tyrant all the time. As long as people kept the conversations on track and didn’t come in to the thread saying things like “KAI IS SO HOT ND T3H BEST N I AM GUN 2 MARRY HIM” she stayed mostly civil. It was always hilarious watching InuYahsa or Naruto fans try to come in and bad mouth Beyblade because they’d unleash the dragon and C was great at chasing off undesirables in the thread.

The real apex of goings on though on Gaia was the guild drama. So guilds were like exclusive themed mini forums within Gaia. Anyone could buy one and run it however they want, as long as it still adhered to Gaia’s ToS. C of course was the owner of the only Beyblade guild. The fandom wasn’t really big enough to support 2 guilds so we just kind of let it go. Technically she allowed people to post slash fanfics but like everything had to be explicitly tagged and there was absolutely no slash RP. Wifey and I controlled a handful of minor characters together in the forum RP and definitely used to try to push the boundaries a little bit. Some ambiguous flirting here, a stray comment there. It was such a fragile balance though because C was heavy on the ban button. The active portion of the guild was just people that were in the cult of C and worshipped her writing.

Understandably the other slash fans and myself were getting disheartened by this. So we pooled our funds together and decided that we’d open a second guild that though it was run by slash fans we would welcome anyone into our ranks. We just wanted to have a fun place for everyone to hang out, and to hopefully run a few events out of. In hindsight, we should have seen what would happen. When we opened the guild, with me as the guild leader, it was like somebody blew up the whole dam protecting the delicate ecosystem we had cultivated. Every single person in the Gaia fandom that was not a zealous follower of C applied to be in our guild and left her guild. We of course figured that we’d attract some of the gen population but we did not expect to accidentally poach all of it. All of the moderators were getting messages from people thanking us for giving them a place where they could say whatever they wanted without fear of getting their faces ripped off or banned.

C lost her shit. She was so mad that we went behind her back to ruin her guild. We literally had to show her posts in the very public slash thread that we had been planning this in public and that it was not to ruin her life. We just wanted a place where we could freely post slash. The two of us had some spicy comments back and forth and then she dropped an absolute bombshell on me. Since Gaia’s mail system is terrible I unfortunately no longer have exactly what she said but it was something along the lines of “Ok, you win. I’m going to close my guild.”. Us slash fans had never been doing this to win anything. We had never been competing. We just wanted a safe space to be ourselves.

C never joined our guild. The fandom slowly faded out within the next year anyway. We weren’t getting new content so naturally people just drifted into other fandoms. C kept up with the main Beyblade thread for a lot longer than most of us but eventually that eventually faded into obscurity too.

I learned a lot about fandom bullies from those days. But honestly the thing that stuck with me the most out of everything was that if you provide a positive safe space for people they will flock to it. It may seem like there are so many hostile people out there, but there really aren't. They're the minority but they just make sure that their voice is the loudest. The best way is to ignore them and just do your own thing. The bullies just want attention and if you don’t give it to them and prove to them that their opinion doesn’t matter to you then they’ll move in and find something else to yell at.

#malicious musings #stacey's adventures in fandom drama #lol #honestly it was such a fucking wild time #if i think of any other specific instances of drama i'll add them #god i wish i had screenshots of some of what went on #but sadly going through archived gaia posts is easier said than done

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protectwoc · 5 years ago

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The Problem with Mal (part 1/3)

Or, Framing and Why It’s Important

Let me get this out of the way right away: I love Descendants. I love DCOMs, I always have, and I love musical DCOMs even more. High School Musical and its sequels were my whole life growing up, and I can sing every word of every Camp Rock 2 song right now from memory (even though I didn’t like Camp Rock 1; don’t hate me.) But what I love even more than musical DCOMs is Disney Movies. Aladdin, Mulan, Hercules, these are some of my favorite movies from growing up, so combining Disney Movies with Disney Channel Original Movie/Musical? The most galaxy-brained idea imaginable from my point of view.

BUT.

I have a problem with the writing in Descendants. More specifically, I have a problem with Mal.

Quite frankly, I just don’t like Mal. I think she’s mean, and I think the movies would be better off if she wasn’t in them. If I completely turn my brain off and absorb the story the way I’m sure the writers want me to I could be fine with her, but the second I begin to think about any of her actions beyond the surface or the implications of those actions I remember why I don’t like her. I didn’t like her in the first movie, and that feeling has only grown exponentially with the release of every moment. All of that culminated in D3, where my Mal-hate has reached its peak. It has bubbled over, and I must release it somehow.

So what am I going to do with that? I’m going to write about it. Why? Mostly because my brother wouldn’t listen to me complain/rant about it and I had to put these emotions somewhere. Let’s do this.

DISCLAIMER(S)

1. This is literally a giant anti-Mal hate post. I’m going to try to keep this as even and fair as I can, but I’m not going to pretend like this is an unbiased assessment. If you are a Mal stan, this is the part when you click away.

2. I am by no means a literary or film analyst. I am technically a “writer”, but that’s about all the credentials I can provide. If you’re looking for actual academic discussion, you are going to be sorely disappointed.

3. This has nothing to do with Dove Cameron. I actually like Dove, I think she’s a talented actress and singer (rapping and dancing notwithstanding). I mean, I watched every single episode of Liv and Maddie when I was way past too old for that to be acceptable. Dove Cameron is probably a fine human being, I really appreciated what she said about the addition of politics into the Descendants universe, and I actually like her in the role, I just wish I liked the role itself. But I don’t want anyone to take this as an attack on her as a person or anything.

4. I read the Isle of the Lost when it first came out like a thousand years ago, and the Wikipedia synopsis for Rise of the Isle of the Lost. I also watched the first three or four episodes of Wicked World and I can’t remember a single thing that happened in them. With that said, this essay is ONLY about the movies. The movies should be (and are, I believe) able to stand on their own, and at this point, I’m not even sure if the tie-ins are considered canon anymore. With that said, there are some things from the tie-ins that are pretty much common knowledge among fandoms (Uma and Mal didn’t get along on the Isle because Mal was kind of a bully, the VKs’ parents were abusive, etc) that probably bled into this essay. If there’s something I wrote about that has been rendered noncanon by the movies please let me know. On the same track, please don’t comment saying that something from Wicked World explained/justified/whatever else a point that I make, because it’s not going to change my argument.

5. This is not, like, me passing judgment on Mal stans. I’m not saying that Mal stans are bad or dumb or whatever for liking her character. I don’t really expect this to change anyone’s mind about stanning Mal either. This is purely a cathartic exercise for myself that I decided to inflict on the world for some reason.

Okay, I think that’s about it. If you have any thoughts at all on this, please come talk to me about it! Agree, disagree, love it, hate it, I literally just want to talk to other descendants fans. Y’all ready to do this? I give you…

Part 1: Mal Alone

Let’s look at the series of actions and the motivations behind them for Mal’s character.

Descendants 1

Mal is chosen to go to Auradon; she is very reluctant.

Her mother demands that she steal the fairy godmother’s wand, Mal agrees.

Mal convinces the others to help her steal the wand; they break into the museum but fail to retrieve it.

Mal learns that positioning herself as Ben’s girlfriend will give her the best shot at retrieving the wand, she spells Ben into falling in love with her.

As all this is happening, Mal is gaining popularity at school for her ability to provide magically beautiful hairstyles.

On their first date, Mal begins to have actual feelings for Ben, she considers releasing him from the spell.

Audrey, her grandmother, and the other AKs bully Mal and the rest of the VKs, and Mal regains her faith in the plan. She also takes away Jane’s magical hair.

Mal concedes from the plan enough to decide to release Ben from the spell, but only after the coronation.

Mal considers stealing the wand; before she gets the chance, Jane does so and accidentally opens the barrier.

Mal takes the wand back from Jane to give to her mother, Ben convinces her not to.

Mal defeats her mother and remains by Ben’s side in Auradon.

Notice a theme here? Mal is characterized by two things, and essentially two things only: her ambition and her survivalist spirit. I should clarify that when I say ambition, I don’t necessarily mean in the traditional, politically power-hungry sense. Mal is an opportunist. Every decision she makes is done with the intention of securing a position for herself, and usually a high-ranking position.

She rules the island before coming to Auradon and is reluctant to leave that position of power when given the opportunity. When she arrives at Auradon, she becomes the school’s magically appointed hairstylist, first to seduce information out of Jane, and then because it gains her popularity within the school. Notice how as soon as this popularity is taken out of the equation, Mal disappears all of the beautiful hairstyles? Mal wasn’t sharing her magic for any kind, selfless reason, but because it could get her something, and as soon as she stopped being able to get something, she took them away.

Mal also finesses her way into the already-occupied spot of the second most powerful person in the kingdom. From there every decision she makes is an attempt to keep that spot. It could be argued that Mal displayed some selfless impulse when she decided to free Ben from her love spell, but even this comes second to herself. She tells him explicitly that the cupcake is for “later”, as in, after the coronation and after she and her mother have already taken over, and when he eats a bit anyway, she yells “No!” at him. Maybe she does feel something for Ben, but he still clearly comes second to herself.

Then in the finale, she chooses good, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because it “makes her happy”. Although this movie was marketed as “villain kids learning to be good,” among other things, Mal never actually learned this lesson. She is okay playing second fiddle to her mother for a little bit, but her pivotal moment of growth is ultimately her deciding that she’d rather be Ben’s number two, and there she remains.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the second movie.

Mal opens the movie trying to fit herself into the perfect princess/girlfriend role, which makes her unhappy.

On a date with Ben, she gets caught using magic and attempts to spell him into forgetting their argument.

Mal runs off from her date and away to the Isle. Once there, she immediately reverts to her villain self, even going so far as to dye her hair in a stunning bit of Disney subtlety.

While there, Uma, her old rival, kidnaps her boyfriend. She works to get him back but maintains that she will be staying on the Isle after he is safe.

Mal and Evie sing a beautiful song about how much they mean to each other, but it does not change her mind.

During the battle, Mal (apparently) changes her mind. She returns to the Isle with Ben and her friends but seems unhappy about it.

At the coronation, Mal again slips into her “perfect” persona, shown by her wearing Auradon’s colors.

Uma arrives at the coronation, having spelled Ben into falling in love with her. Mal is heartbroken and tries to leave.

She is stopped by Jane revealing Ben’s coronation gift to her, a stained-glass picture of her in her Isle colors.

Mal true-love’s-kisses Ben awake. She turns into a dragon and fights Uma. When she turns back, she is dressed in the gown depicted in the picture.

In this movie, too, Mal makes every decision with the intention of securing her personal standing. She dislikes being forced to play a part at the beginning of the movie, but she is willing to put up with it if it means getting to stay Ben’s girlfriend, even to the point of spelling her boyfriend who she claims to love. When she believes for a second that that option could be lost to her, she immediately retreats to the Isle, where she is guaranteed some measure of power.

When she arrives, however, she finds that someone has usurped her position on the Isle, and it is Uma, her old rival. When she discovers that Uma has kidnapped Ben, she tries everything to get him back. This, it could be said is an altruistic act, done out of love for another person, but even this is tarnished because she clearly does not love Ben enough to be with him. She makes that very clear over and over again. She even sings a whole song about how much she loves Evie but again, not enough to leave her position of power.

So if it’s not love, why else would she go through so much trouble to rescue Ben? Simple: she cannot allow her rival to get a leg up on her. Mal spends the rest of the movie after she discovers Uma is involved working to publicly undermine her. Why else would she agree to an arm-wrestling match of all things in front of Uma’s entire crew? When they leave the isle after rescuing Ben, Mal doesn’t end up with them because she changes her mind about Ben or Evie, but to prevent Uma from escaping after her. For two straight movies now, Mal has refused to make even a single unselfish decision.

Let’s move on to Descendants 3, arguably the worst offender.

Mal opens the movie helping the other four VKs announce the new arrivals into Auradon.

She is next shown keeping an eye out for Uma, the only other person who poses a threat to her.

Ben proposes to her, securing her position as Queen of Auradon.

Mal, Ben, and the other VKs return to the Isle to pick up the chosen children, but as they are leaving, Hades almost escapes.

When Hades, her estranged father, and Uma, her bitter rival, both appear to pose a threat, Mal suggests that they close the barrier permanently and prevent any other VKs from crossing over.

She lies to Evie about her role in the closing of the barrier to preserve their friendship.

When Mal discovers that Audrey, her original bully, poses a danger to Auradon, and herself specifically, she returns to the Isle to beg her father for help in the form of a magical ember.

On the way back, they are stopped by the Sea Three, who steal the ember from her. In exchange for the ember and their help with Audrey, Mal agrees to release all the children from the Isle, a promise she does not intend to keep.

Back in Auradon, Mal and Uma butt heads over leadership of their uneasy alliance. When Uma suggests they split up and go check Audrey’s cottage, Mal scoffs at this idea.

When they ultimately end up going with Uma’s plan and finding Audrey’s diary as a result, Mal thanks her for her contribution.

Evie is anxious about whether true love’s kiss will work on Doug. She sings a song about it, and Mal and Uma are seen behind her, encouraging her and providing backup vocals.

Audrey attempts to trap them inside the cottage, and Mal and Uma are forced to work together to free themselves.

At the Fairy Cottage, Mal admits that it was her idea to close the barrier permanently and that she still intends to go along with this plan.

Mal’s group implodes, and she sings a song about how she intends to get her happy ending.

Mal finds Audrey and attempts to battle her as a dragon. Uma, on the ground, forgives her for some reason. They combine magic and defeat Audrey, who goes into a coma.

Mal has her father temporarily escorted from the Isle so that he can wake Audrey. They reconcile.

Mal’s friends forgive her for the closing of the barrier, even the Sea Three, who apparently have no problem with returning to the Isle.

Before an audience of Auradon citizens, Mal announces her plan to close the barrier permanently. She finishes by saying that she cannot be the Queen of Auradon, she has to be Queen of both (the Isle and Auradon).

They take down the barrier and Mal is reunited with her father. At the end of the movie, the four original VKs return to the Isle to visit their parents.

Descendants 3 is interesting because it combines some of Mal’s most self-serving actions with her only three altruistic ones. Halfway through the movie, Uma makes a suggestion about how to find Audrey. Although Mal initially ignores her, the idea proves to be a good one, and Mal thanks her for her idea. This was Mal’s first entirely selfless action in three movies, which I underlined above because it is so significant.

A short while later, Evie is shown angsting about whether she and Doug are really True Love through song. In the background, Mal and Uma support her, both emotionally and through backup vocal “do-waps.” This is notable because it is the first time Mal is ever seen supporting one of her so-called friends, but we’ll get to that later.

The third and final act, also underlined above, is even more significant. Mal calls her estranged and neglectful father from the Isle to wake Audrey from her coma. This is where I must truly give Mal credit. Coming face to face with her abusive (yes, neglect is a form of abuse) father in order to help a person who bullied her and became a villain to hurt her specifically is a truly selfless action. It must have been hard for her to face him again so soon after he told her “You’re stronger with those daddy issues” (yuck). Furthermore, it would have been easy for her to leave Audrey in her coma, as Audrey had never been kind to her. This action required actual sacrifice and was done for no personal gain on Mal’s part, which makes it basically the best thing she’s ever done. Unfortunately, this scene arrives on the tail of a movie dedicated to showcasing Mal’s worst impulses at increasingly higher levels.

For the rest of the movie, Mal’s modus operandi of doing everything possible to secure her own position is in full effect. It is no coincidence that the moment she has the most to lose (Her position as Queen of Auradon at the hands of her father and her biggest rival) is the moment she makes her most callous and self-serving decision yet: to close the barrier permanently, essentially dooming all of the children still on the Island to a lifetime of poverty and oppression. Even within a small, unstable group of the original VKs + the Sea Three (and Celia I guess), Mal cannot bear not being the one in charge, arguing with Uma at every turn. And when her supposed best friends and her fiance are turned to stone, does she show any sadness for them at all? Of course not. She sings a Broadway song about how determined she is to find her own happy ending.

This, of course, culminates at the end of the movie, when Mal decides they should bring down the barrier. As an aside, bringing down the barrier is a terrible idea, because releasing all of the actual villains on the families of the heroes whose lives they attempted to ruin is… unwise, but I digress. On paper, this should also be considered a selfless act, but of course, Mal undermines it by claiming that she cannot be Queen of Auradon, she “must be the queen of the Isle too.” Her final act is synonymous with her biggest bid for power yet, and unbelievably, it works. Thus, Mal ends the third movie the same way she started the first, vying for power at the expense of Auradon (and basically everyone else.)

Mal is an incredibly selfish character. She makes three total noble decisions over three movies, and they all happen in the final installment. Amazingly, I don’t think this makes her a bad character, nor do I think this is bad writing on the part of the screenwriters. What makes this bad is the way her actions and “arc” are framed.

Self-serving protagonists can work. Look at Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove, or Rebecca in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, or even Bojack of Bojack Horseman (disclaimer, I have not seen CxGF or Bojack Horseman, these comparisons are based on my surface-level understanding of these shows and a cursory skim of Tvtropes. Y’all are welcome to tell me why I’m wrong about this.) The difference is, if you want your audience to root for these self-serving main characters, you have to show them going through some sort of growth or arc to become more selfless, particularly if you are writing a DCOM about the merits of being good. But unfortunately, this is only the beginning of the problems with Mal’s character.

#Disney's Descendants #descendants #Descendants 2 #descendants 3 #anti mal #anti mal bertha #anti bal #uma descendants #uma daughter of ursula #uma deserves better #audrey descendants #audrey deserves better #evie grimhilde #raetalks

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tabletoppotluck · 6 years ago

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A Town Called Malice Potluck Blog

The clouds have passed over Malice. As the rain washes away our fears, we will in turn pour our feelings on this system over your willing eyes and ears. If you don’t have time to listen to the potluck episode, here’s a handy blog post to reference as you decide whether or not you want to click that Buy-It-Now button! So now let’s dig in to A Town Called Malice (ATCM) by David Kizzia and Monkeyfun Studios.

Remember to take our review with a grain of salt since the game is likely to change by the time it is officially released!

Our first discussion topic was the Nordic Horror setting and its effectiveness in this system. Even our players who were not well-versed in Nordic Horror still really enjoyed the setting and the eerie feel made possible in such a small town. We made sure to touch on the fact that although we made the Darkness something supernatural, the game does not specify that; your Darkness can be as terrifyingly real as you wish! The rules and creation guides leave many options to the players while guiding them along an easily spoopy situation.

The game appears to be very open to possibilities. With that in mind, David Kizzia mentions the possibility of a PvP playstyle. The Beta rules do not go into detail on this, but the entire team is very interested in learning more about that choice! We’re personally hoping for some Betrayal at House on the Hill surprise twisty goodness!

Continuing on, the playbooks fit perfectly in the setting (if you want a sneak peak at every playbook, check out our Session 0 at patreon.com/tabletoppotluck). The archetypal structure of the characters lets you take a very specific role and implement it however you’d like to fit your desired story. It’s very easy to make a community through the playbooks, and they’re all made to build a seamless sense of community. You start the game by creating your characters which includes creating a location in town and an NPC that fits with it. This includes everyone in the world building and makes it more of a group activity instead of just running a cut and dry setting guide. We love the inclusion of the players in worldbuilding in any game and were so excited to see it explicitly asked for here.

On the subject of structure, we addressed a unique feature of ATCM. Instead of a singular GM running the game, the system requires a narrator. This can either be one player (who also has a character in the game) or the role can be shared by all players, each taking turn with the role as the spotlight shifts between them. As lovers of secrets and unknown horrors, a lot of us questioned how effectively a scary story can be told if 1. Everyone knows the secrets or 2. No one knows the secrets and it’s all improv. As a sole narrator, Megan found it a bit difficult to balance knowing the hidden information and trying not to meta-game as her PC. That being said, we all agreed that we wouldn’t want to give up the feature of all players taking turns being NPCs. This fits better with a rotating narrator, or at least a narrator who doesn’t take the sole role of GM, and really solidifies this as a game of community. You build the town, you continue to help it grow as you create new locations, and you lend your voice to the community. It’s very rounded out between every player and no .

As much as we believe comparing this game to Fiasco is like comparing apples to oranges, we want to touch on the topic because they’re both technically GM-less games. If you want a bit more structure to your improv TTRPG, ATCM has a lot of it. Fiasco is, as the name suggests, more of a chaotic, comedic whirlwind. It’s the different of wanting a fun, Cohen brothers film or a darker Fargo. If you’re a fan of a bit more structure and darker narratives, you’ll love A Town Called Malice.

Some players might struggle with the fact that the existence of full success/mixed success/ full failure endings leads some people to stray a little bit away from natural roleplay due to the innate desire to win. If you want a full success, you most likely will end up meta-gaming at least a little bit as you head towards the final act and confrontation with the darkness. And that’s fair! But if you want that out of your games, you might take up issue with ATCM. At the same time, this leads to very cooperative play which can be a joy if you’ve had problems with adventuring parties that are constantly questioning why they travel together.

On the subject of Scenes: There are 5 different possible scenes you can choose to run on your turn. These either resolve something personal for your character or address a story pillar of the game. As we’ve seen throughout ATCM, that’s a lot of options to keep you from feeling trapped in only one choice. You can help your friends, fight alone, or just go out and do whatever puts your character ahead. And that’s a good concept. We could see some of the scenes growing more from where they currently are, but other than that it’s a pretty good start! Each brings something different in the evolution of the acts, but their effects are still pretty easy to follow. The change between the acts itself can be very subtle and that can let the importance of the ending sneak up on you. It’s important to remember that this game will eventually end and there can be dire consequences for your choices even from the first act. That being said, you need to stay on your toes if you want to win because one dice roll can change the entire game.

As was just mentioned, this game has an ending. This isn’t really built to be played over years and years (though there are notes in the book for continuing the story). If you feel like you don’t have the time to commit to an RPG campaign, ATCM can be a perfect option for telling deep, dark stories on a busy schedule. The team had a bit of a disagreement on if this game can be picked up and played on a moment’s notice, even though it’s very low commitment (aside from emotional). Marquez thinks it depends on the people you run it with. Ray thinks it still requires setup to be run well. Like the Betrayal at House on the Hill boardgame, it requires a bit of setup and a certain level of investment, so it really is up to you if that’s the type of game you’d go for at a party! If that sounds like a party for you, invite Megan.

This is a game for “spooky binches,” those who like mysteries and thrillers, psychological film nerds (Jacobs Ladder), and serious improv troupes (which should totally exist). If you want to play normal people confronting things far above their understanding and normal wheelhouse, then this is a game for you.

So would we play it again?

-Sally wants to experience mixed success endings and failures.

-Marquez wants to play the other playbooks.

-Ray would possibly play it but isn’t chomping at the bit. She wants to see a PvP playthrough though.

-Megan can’t wait to see what changes will be made when the Kickstarter has done.

Some tips for playing:

-If you want more instances of the darkness having a chance to come in to play, play with more than 4 players! And work on confronting the darkness as much as you can!

-Like any game, play with it. If you want to modify the rules for a certain mechanic to fit your group better, feel free! There are so many options in this game, it feels like optimization really fits the spirit of the system.

-Make sure you’re upping the stakes as you get closer to the ending! The game doesn’t necessarily tell you when to do that (aside from Darkness scene failures), so follow your gut and let that darkness shine!

-Sally thinks that this game is a bit difficult for people who have no experience with tabletop roleplaying games. So if you’ve got newbies in your group, make sure you’re checking in with them to make sure they’re getting the most out of the game! Also, probably shepherd them through it with a selected narrator instead of taking turns with that role.

A Town Called Malice is on Kickstarter from April 23rd-May 24th: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/monkeyfunstudios/a-town-called-malice-a-nordic-horror-story-game

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fountainpenguin · 6 years ago

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This may be too political a question, so you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but ... are there any Fairies/Anti-Fairies/Pixies/Refracts who are transgender? Do they get treated nicely or not-so-nicely by society? And if, say, a Fairy undergoes a medical transition, will the Anti-Fairy and Refract counterparts also go through a transition?

Short answer is yes, there are trans fae, and reactions vary by culture (Fairies are very accepting, Refracted aren’t except those who follow Dame Artemis, all Pixies use he/him pronouns except for Commelina, and for Anti-Fairies it’s complicated). Some things affect counterparts and others don’t.

More details about magic and gender under the cut.

Cases

Just like sexual orientation terms, modern human words like trans and transgender aren’t used anachronistically in my works, but the concept exists and we do have some interesting cases to look at.

The ancestors of present-day fae, the Aos Sí, were hermaphrodite beings. Gender was not even remotely part of their culture. Technically their language didn’t include pronouns at all, but for the benefit of the reader, they/them pronouns exist and are used when discussing the Aos Sí, such as in the “That Was Then” and “Stand Alone” Prompts.

Daoine, also hermaphrodite, technically don’t have pronouns in their language either. For the benefit of the reader, Daoine choose their pronouns, and they/them is equally common and viewed as acceptable alongside he/him and she/her.

In Anti-Fairy culture, souls are inherently genderless, and cycle through life reincarnating in different bodies. Body dysphoria isn’t considered an issue for Anti-Fairies; it’s 100% expected that you will feel body dysphoria, but it’s believed that body dysphoria is a natural struggle of life. Anti-Fairies almost never ask to be referred to with different pronouns, since they’re taught that souls are genderless, but that they should identify with the expected pronouns for their current body’s sex. Body dysphoria is considered happy proof that reincarnation is a real thing, and isn’t viewed as an unpleasant burden.

The first High Count of the Anti-Fairies, Anti-Kahnii, is explicitly referred to with they/them pronouns. We’ll discuss Anti-Kahnii more eventually (they’re the narrator of “Stand Alone”), but Anti-Kahnii was the very last Aos Sí to split their soul into three counterparts. Due to certain circumstances such as pregnancy, none of the three Kahniis ever felt comfortable identifying as male or female, and simply identified as “Neither.” Anti-Kahnii is a very respected figure in Anti-Fairy culture, and referring to them with pronouns besides they/them is considered extremely offensive.

We recently learned in Frayed Knots that Anti-Cosmo is the reincarnation of a damsel. He has some scattered memories, but considers that part of his past to be dead, and uses he/him pronouns.

In Anti-Fairy culture, they/them pronouns have traditionally been reserved for those believed to be closest with the nature spirits. According to Fairy culture, Anti-Cosmo has the magical mood disorder divus displacement disorder, but according to Anti-Fairies, his mood swings are the result of his soul intertwining with a lightning spirit. In his youth, he was referred to with they/them pronouns, despite the fact that he begged to be addressed as he/him instead. Most of the Anti-Fairy public don’t know he was ever referred to as anything other than he/him.

I was gonna save this for later, but Foop is genderfluid and doesn’t care what pronouns you use to identify him. Most of the public refer to him with he/him pronouns, and he expects she/her pronouns when he’s presenting as Angel. He sometimes uses they/them pronouns as a plural to encompass both himself and Hiccup. He only actively identifies as genderfluid when he’s older; during his youth, he identifies as male.

We also just learned in Knots that some pixies have been “masculinized” as a side effect of Wolbachia pipientis. One of the four phenotypes of Wolbachia is feminization: In insects, infected males are turned into functional females, who develop a uterus and can reproduce asexually like the regular infected females. About 40% of pixies were randomly born with damsel sex chromosomes, but drake reproductive parts, although most of them have no idea and see no difference between themselves and the other pixies. We don’t delve into this much in my fanfics because it doesn’t really do anything besides tick off Venus Eros, but it’s a thing that does exist.

The pixie Commelina is an extremely unusual case who was born with both damsel sex chromosomes and a damsel’s reproductive system for super rare Wolbachia reasons we’ll discuss later in Origin of the Pixies. She is the only pixie in my works to use she/her pronouns. I shared her concept art on this blog HERE and now that I’ve revealed her, I guess she’s due for a finalized design and an official character profile!

Changes

Using regular pink magic to change your sex will only affect you, not your counterparts. Ongoing magic will drain energy as normal, and fade when the user is deprived of magic or if their connection to the energy field fritzes (such as when aroused, or drunk on candy and soda).

Those who attend schools like the Fairy Academy can choose different specialties to study. Alteration magic is a medical specialty that allows you to change a person’s body and lock it into place as the new default, so maintaining the look won’t be continuously draining and won’t normally undo itself in magic deadzones. Alteration is usually used for cosmetic reasons, but can be used for big changes too. This is a permanent, all-encompassing change and will affect counterparts if alteration magic is used on the host. Cosmo had his nose altered with alteration magic, which also affected his counterparts, but Timmy’s wish in “The Boy Who Would Be Queen” that Cosmo and Wanda would be “Back to the way they were born” overrode the alternation magic, because wishes are that powerful.

If the host counterpart has a physical transition instead of a magical one, the counterparts will not be affected, so you could end up with a Fairy the same sex as their Refracted counterpart instead of their Anti-Fairy counterpart.

You could also take the long way by swapping souls with a cù sith / fairy dog and then swapping souls with someone else, and get a new body that way. Most people consider this unethical because it usually involves stealing a body from someone else without their permission, but it works if you’re desperate, and it can be done with consent too.

Society

The first thing you need to know about Fairy society is, Fairy society has excellent gender equality. Damsels were never seen as fragile childbearers, and have always been viewed as equally capable of doing tasks that drakes can do (although the stereotype is that drakes can deliver more powerful punches of magic, and damsels can maintain magic for longer). It’s always been socially acceptable for drakes and damsels to wear either pants or dresses. It’s not uncommon for a drake to be a homemaker and for his wife to be the family breadwinner (and the reverse is equally common).

Fairy culture emphasizes the idea that you know yourself better than anyone, and you should live the life you’re most comfortable living as long as you’re respecting everyone else’s life to do the same. So, Fairy culture is very accepting of things like alteration magic.

Anti-Fairy culture is biased to favor drakes, since I based their social structure off bat colony social structure. It’s more likely a damsel would be open about transitioning to being a drake than a drake would be open about transitioning to be a damsel. It miiiiiight be worth noting that due to the way Anti-Fairy biology works, two drakes can mate exactly the same way a drake and damsel can, so drakes transitioning to damsels for the sole purpose of changing reproductive parts would never happen. You wouldn’t need to.

Anti-Fairy culture tends to sneer at alteration magic in general as something unnatural and immoral, since Anti-Fairy culture revolves around fate and destiny, and you’re viewed as going against the nature spirits if you alter your looks for long (Remember, this is the culture that believes you should only shapeshift into one animal form your entire life).

Most Anti-Fairies believe in reincarnation, and will openly admit if they feel they’re a different sex in this life than they were in past lives, but the general belief is that you should live your current life with the body you’ve been given. Altering that body in any significant way is considered insulting to the spirits (though whether the spirits actually do care is another concept altogether).

The social stigma against alteration magic is what forces Foop to use a potion to age himself in “Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails.”

Transitioning would not be acceptable in Refracted culture, with one exception- Dame Artemis allows her followers to cast off old traditions and live however they like. She doesn’t care what you want to do with your body, and encourages her followers to respect everyone.

The Refracted only know how to use pink shapeshifting magic, though, and don’t even know how to poof things up, let alone manage something as huge as alteration magic. They’re just not taught, so they’d have to find an outsider trained in alteration magic if that’s what they want.

#Anon #asks #FAIRIES!#ridwriting #We're Pixies!#Bat cube and associates #Frayed Knots #Snips and Snails #The bat with the hat #Nerdy blue bat son #Pious gold and white bird people yep #Flower pixie

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greaseonmymouth · 6 years ago

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Punk Genres and Potential Problems

This post is inspired by this very long reblog chain about punk genres, definitions, and issues. It's one of those 'my buddy is confused but he's got the spirit' posts, i.e. not completely wrong, some things right, excellent points, and some flaws stemming from inaccuracies and...whatnot. Instead of piling onto that post I'm writing up a brand new post for people to reblog and disagree with. This is based 98% on my own academic research into these genres. The remaining 2% is Opinions. (That's a lie. Academic Research to Opinion ratio is more like 60/40.)

There are even sources! Because sources are GREAT. They are under the cut.

SCIENCE FICTION

The -punk genres are subgenres of science fiction, science fiction being…well, as hard to define as its subgenres. This in no way makes it difficult to write academic papers about this shit.

One of the earlier definitions put science fiction (from now on, SF) as a didactic and progressive literature with emphasis on science; a literature about science for science, with scientific methodology (Stableford:2015). As the discussion for SF definitions has progressed, so has discussion about what the correct term should be; speculative fiction (Merril:1971:60) and structural fabulation (Scholes:1975:29) have been contenders. Today science fiction and speculative fiction are used interchangeably.

There's no consensus on how to define SF (Westfahl:1998, Stableford et al:2015), though a bunch of people have tried, such as Damon Knight, who famously said: "Science fiction is what we point to when we say it." (Clute:1995:314), and Gary Westfahl, who proposed that "A work labelled science fiction has these three features: it is a prose narrative with scientific language and non-realistic subject matter – or any two of these three features." (Westfahl:1998:299).

The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction defines SF like this:

"A genre (of literature, film, etc.) in which the setting differs from our own world (e.g. by the invention of new technology, through contact with aliens, by having a different history, etc.), and in which the difference is based on extrapolations made from one or more changes or suppositions; hence, such a genre in which the difference is explained (explicitly or implicitly) in scientific or rational, as opposed to supernatural, terms." (Prucher:2009:171.)

In the words of Tom Shippey, however, SF "is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it." (Jakubowski & Edwards:1983).

WELL ISN'T THAT NEAT? :D SF is what we point to when we say it, as changeable as the weather, and most probably, is about science or a setting different from ours through science.

So, on to the -punk genres. I'm listing them below in a somewhat chronological order of invention. First a brief overview, and then I'll do in-depth bullets about cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, and solarpunk, as those are the -punk genres I'm most familiar with.

Cyberpunk, which concerns itself mostly with a dystopian society in which humans access cyberspace by way of cybernetics.

Biopunk, a close cousin of cyberpunk that deals with consequences of human and genetic experimentation and biotechnology (Michaud:2008:53). The main difference between biopunk and cyberpunk is that biopunk modifications have nothing to do with cyberware and cyberspace, but only genetic and biological manipulation.

Steampunk, which is retro-futuristic alternative history fiction that reimagines history and science based on an alternative universe in which the industrial revolution did not happen (or happened differently), and in which steam based science evolved. Steampunk is rooted in the politics of the Victorian era as well as aesthetic - fashion, architecture, etc.. Steampunk rarely extends beyond the Victorian era. (Guffey & Lemay:2014, Booker:2015:290.)

Dieselpunk, a close cousin of steampunk in that it is also retro-futuristic alternative history fiction, but unlike steampunk, dieselpunk accepts the industrial revolution and focuses on dieselpowered technology. (Guffey & Lemay:2014.)

Solarpunk, a new eco-futuristic political movement that has produced little literature so far. In literature it is SF that is either retro-futuristic fiction that reimagines an alternative history in which the industrial revolution did not happen, or evolved into a different direction, or futuristic fiction in which the current environmental issues have been solved. In a solarpunk universe, the world has become solar- or windpowered, ecological and sustainable. (Lodi-Ribeiro:2014.)

Many more, such as decopunk, clockpunk, atomicpunk, and so on. All the -punk subgenres are typically considered cyberpunk derivatives, in that they are either inspired by elements of cyberpunk or have borrowed the -punk suffix to allow twisting and mixing. They focus on a certain aspect of technological advancement and its consequences, whereas SF as an overarching genre is free to do whatever it wants within the realm of a) prose narrative, b) technological advancement ("scientific language") and c) non-realistic subject matter, if going by Westfahl's definition of SF.

CYBERPUNK

In cyberpunk, the advanced technology is very often biotechnology; technology that alters the human body or mind, for example brain implants that allow the human mind access to the internet, or cyberspace. In addition to this, the life quality of the characters in a cyberpunk story tends to be very low. Cyberpunk represents a future in which humans are subject to ruthless digital and technical communications networks and have lost the human connection to each other (Cavallaro:2000:xv). Cyberpunk is by nature a dystopian genre by virtue of its themes and discussions, which often revolve around the potential downfalls of technological advancement. Important to note here is that cyberpunk as a genre was born in the early eighties, at the beginning of the technological boom. Internet, cell phones, microchips and bionic prosthetics were all new things under development, and so it would be very easy to conclude that the genre was also in part born out of fear of the unknown. The - punk part of the term was taken directly from 1970s rock'n'roll terminology, punk in this context meaning young, aggressive, streetwise, and alienated, and offensive to the Establishment. In the early 1980s the term cyberpunk was coined by writer Bruce Bethke, and the term came into common use via William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984). (Nicholls:2015a.)

Non-exhaustive list of themes:

Punk disillusionment, sometimes with layers of illusions being peeled away as the story progresses

The loss of human connection and/or the decline of the human condition

Media overload, massive data networks and density of information

Destructive sex, often in connection with the lack of ability to form human connections

Bodily metamorphosis and/or body modifications that lead to transhuman and posthuman themes.

A dark, gritty and post-industrial global setting, often megacities, that further overshadow the protagonist and emphasise their position in society

Heavy substance use & addiction

Hopelessness – the protagonists nurture no hope of getting out of their predicament and/or do not succeed

Disregard for human life

(Burrows & Featherstone:1996; Elias:2009:3; Shiner:1991; Hollinger:1990; McHale:1992; Murphy & Vint:2010; Shiner:1992; Slusser:1992; Cavallaro:2000, Lavigne:2013:11-16.)

In addition to these, cyberpunk themes very often also overlap with postmodernist themes such as:

"lost in the city" themes of lack of identity

An increasingly fractured and globalised society

The loss of meaning or a higher order, religion is non-existent and there is no god or other higher authority to whom one can turn for answers

Deconstruction. It can be argued that cyberpunk in itself is a deconstruction of utopian SF narratives – the utopia of SF is often the dystopia of cyberpunk.

(McCaffery:1991: 315-316; McHale:1991; Heuser:2003; Woods:1999:65-66.)

Now, cyberpunk was coined by a bunch of cishet white dudes in a single writer's circle, who just wanted to look really cool. (See the Mirrorshades anthology and it's editor, who was the one who most wanted to be cool.) The same dudes have now declared this genre dead and that it is no longer active as a productive genre, albeit having been a refreshing spark and fresh point of view within SF history and SF literature (Nicholls:2015a). To that I say: bullshit! Genres don't just 'die', and don't just 'stop being productive' - let me refer you back to the definition of SF as a something that changes as you try to define it.

Consider this: in the 80s a bunch of dudebros wrote stories about the danger of technology and the internet while also writing about anti-heroes fighting the establishment (none of these dudebros were actual punks, they were decidedly middle-class to upper middle-class who circle-jerked each other in their writing workshops on the regular and wore sunglasses with mirror-finish). In the 90s the new technology wave didn't really seem all that dangerous anymore, and wasn't the internet and the cellphones awfully convenient? And who cares about Monsanto and Nestlé when we can get cheap flour and coca-cola whenever we want it? And by the 21st century, well, these dudebros are old, likely haven't kept up with their own genre because they're stuck with whatever they thought was genius in the 80s, and technology is everywhere. Also, Japan did not become the technological mega-corporate superpower that they thought it would be in the 80s, and we don't live in a Judge Dredd society, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , basically.

Here's some examples of cyberpunk works: Mirrorshades anthology (1986) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades) Neuromancer, Gibson (1984)

Blade Runner (1982) Ghost in the Shell (1995) The Matrix (1999) Surrogates (2009) Dredd (2012) Elysium (2013) Lucy (2014)

Hey look at that, four movies on this list from the 21st century, but I guess cyberpunk is really dead, guys? How sad Alexa play despacito

Potential problems

There's always a risk that in creating a cyberpunk story that one accidentally ends up writing about sentient fedoras instead of actual anti-heroes fighting against real injustice. If your story is about incels, you're doing cyberpunk wrong.

No really, that's it.

STEAMPUNK

I have no sources for this section because I've not covered steampunk in my own academic research, it's just one of those genres I really like to read recreationally. I have read academic articles about steampunk, but do I have them saved? No, absolutely not. That would be rational, useful, and effective, and that's not how we do things in this household.

That said.

Steampunk is a subgenre of SF that falls under ALTERNATIVE HISTORY rather than COOL FUTURE STUFF. It's retro-futuristic type of science fiction inspired by the likes of Jules Verne, who wrote science fiction in the 19th century. What's characteristic for Jules Verne and other SF writers of the same era, is that they imagined technological development based on the science they had at the time, which is why so many of their inventions are steam powered (coal). They had all these grand ideas (and big imaginations) for what humanity could achieve, but didn't have anything more advanced than coal, steam, and electricity. They didn't know that there was an entire digital revolution waiting to happen in the 20th century, so everything was analogue.

In addition to that, the 19th century still had like, this ginormous British Empire. There were colonies everywhere, French, British, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish--Europeans were stealing lands and killing people (and enslaving them, still). Imperialism was in vogue and the tea, sugar, and opium trade was the highlight of capitalism at the expense of the entire rest of the world.

The modern steampunk genre as it's written today is...based on all that. So you have a genre that's aesthetic as fuck (cogwheels everywhere, amiright?), in a sort of nostalgic way where everyone has on pretty dresses, the technology is adorably analogue, there's steam! Steam is pretty! Science as we know it is disregarded for the Rule of Cool, and some writers even throw in supernatural elements because why the fuck not, and the Victorians were into it anyway.

The steampunk genre was not created to be -punk. It is not inherently rebellious, it doesn't feature a fight against the establishment, it doesn't have anti-heroes, it doesn't really have anything about it that pokes at the status quo of its time (the Victorian era). It was dubbed steampunk because cyberpunk was a term that existed, and it looked cool to model the name of a new subgenre after another one, that clearly set it apart from 'traditional' SF, but also made it clear it was different from cyberpunk.

Potential problems:

The genre as a whole.

I'm not joking.

So, how do you avoid the problem that is steampunk?

De-colonise the narrative* (er, probably don't do this if you're white.)

Whatever you do, make sure you're not accidentally glorifying imperialism and colonialism.

Write stories that subvert the steampunk genre as it's popularly known--go beyond the Victorian era - what does a steampunk world look like that prevailed until 2018? What happened to the British empire in that world? Is it still around? Did it collapse? What role did tech play in it? *who* has the tech - the British empire, or the nations it colonised? What does that mean for history? Who's the hero and who's the establishment? Where is the injustice and who is fighting it?

Steampunk is often known as a fluff genre, where the characters just get to go on adventures and have fun. Drink a lot of tea, eat a lot of food, etc. (Hello, Gail Carriger) There's nothing wrong with fluff, but consider: at whose expense do we get the fluff? Just to take Gail Carriger's steampunk books as an example, her characters frequently exhibit a privilege that only comes with the fact they are British citizens in a British empire.

Examples of steampunk works:

Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Verne (1870) (you didn't think I was going to forget Jules Verne, did you? The Time Machine, Wells (1895) (most people would say it's SF, but I'm adding it here because of when it was written and the faux science) Infernal Devices, Jeter (1987) The Difference Engine, Sterling & Gibson (1991) The Golden Compass, Pullmann (1995) Steampunk and Steampunk Reloaded anthology (2008) edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer The Boneshaker, Priest (2009) The Revolutions, Gilman (2014) Gail Carriger's Parasolverse (on-going)

The City of Lost Children (1995) Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) Treasure Planet (2002) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) Van Helsing (2004) SteamBoy (2004) Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

*this, I'd argue, is how we get e.g. afropunk and silkpunk. :D :D :D i don't mean that afropunk and silkpunk are steampunk under a different name, i mean that those genres are about de-colonising the narrative; alternative history free of western intervention. It's SUPER COOL STUFF, and you should all read it. (As should I.) Ken Liu and JY Yang do silkpunk. Unfortunately I don't know much afropunk, though I do know Black Panther (2018) is an example of afropunk.

DIESELPUNK

Oh man am I READY for this hot mess.

Dieselpunk is another ALTERNATIVE HISTORY subgenre, characterised by being set between WW1 and WW2, when dieselpowered technology was the main technological focus. Dieselpunk fiction sometimes extends into the 1950s and early 1960s, and in those cases often discusses alternative histories in which the Nazis won the war or the post-apocalyptic reality following a nuclear war or other major human-made disastrous event. The term dieselpunk was coined in 2001 by Lewis Pollak and Dan Ross, when they needed to describe the aesthetic of their new game which was steampunk-esque, but darker and grittier than steampunk. Dieselpunk was a world of grit, oil, dust and mud, but also borrowed elements from Art Deco, Dadaism, Cubism, and Futurism, amongst others. (Ottens & Piecraft:2008.)

I have a love-hate relationship with this genre, because there are TWO strands of dieselpunk, and, if you've spotted it already, one of them is about nazis winning and the other is about nazis losing. Guess which one I like? If your answer is 'the one where nazis lose' you are right, gold star for you. I'll be citing a lot from Ottens and Piecraft in this section because there is shockingly little academic research done on dieselpunk. Nick Ottens and Mr. Piecraft are two dudes who like dieselpunk who sat together ten years ago to talk about a definition, and published it in a webzine. It's important to note that Mr. Piecraft is a screenname, and that Piecraft himself is a nazi-sympathiser if not an outright nazi (honestly, what's the difference between nazi-sympathiser and nazi? none). Ottens, on the other hand, uses his own name because he's not a fricking nazi.

So, about those two strands. Let's deal with the nazi first so we can proceed to ignore it for the rest of this post.

Themes of the Piecraftian strand:

Continual dystopian view

The aesthetic of world wars

World War 2 is either being fought as a prolonged cold war or has been won by the Axis powers

Often suggests Nazi-Germany has advanced rocketry and aeroplane programs

Eugenics

The lack of development of human culture due to widespread warfare

In the case of a post-apocalyptical event, survival being largely dependent on diesel power

The occult or supernatural

Often no hope for recovery, survival or a better future

(Ottens & Piecraft:2008)

Y I K E S. just. YIKES.

Themes of the Ottensian strand:

Settings in which the decadent aesthetics and utopian philosophies of the Roaring Twenties continued unhindered by economic collapse or war

The Great Depression did not happen, sometimes World War 1 didn't either

Enthusiasm for the predictions about the future produced throughout the 1930s and 1950s

Positive visions of dieselpowered technology, often realising utopian ideals of technology fairs at the time

Unstoppable technological progress; however the technology almost never crosses the boundary between dieselpowered machines and sophisticated computer technology

Nuclear weapons only an experimental technology

Firmly set in the interwar era and does not incorporate World War 2

Pulp-inspired adventure

Always carries a glimmer of hope

(Ottens & Piecraft:2008)

Dieselpunk is sometimes considered a post-cyberpunk genre within the "Ottensian" tradition, as it may offer a utopian view of the progression stated in a pre-WW2 environment as a counterpoint to the dystopian world views of cyberpunk; dieselpunk as a genre is not just newer than cyberpunk, it showed up right on the heels of cyberpunk. Dieselpunk is also sometimes considered a post-steampunk and pre-cyberpunk genre timeline-wise, as the universe of the "Piecraftian" dieselpunk tradition may eventually turn into a cyberpunk universe with the progress of time and technological advancement, and was in fact considered a continuum between steampunk and cyberpunk by game designers Pollak and Ross. Another view is that dieselpunk fiction can be likened to cyberpunk stories set in the Roaring Twenties instead of in the near future as both cyberpunk and dieselpunk take inspiration from film noir in their storytelling and aesthetic look. (Ottens & Piecraft:2008; Buckell:2015; Feinstein:2014; Wilson:2013.)

I personally think that dieselpunk has a lot more in common with cyberpunk than with steampunk, even though dieselpunk and steampunk are often lumped together. It's easy to see why they are, as both steampunk and dieselpunk are highly aesthetic genres, they're both alternative history, they both have nostalgic elements (e.g. victorian fashion, 20s-40s fashion), and they both lack the true -punk aspect of the genre: the fight against the establishment. At least where the Piecraftian strand is concerned, as that isn't so much about fighting the establishment as it is about glorifying fascism. The Ottensian strand, while 'fluffier', and pulp-ier, definitely has a clear anti-nazi thread--the heroes in pre-WW2 or WW2 stories are explicitly fighting the nazis, not aiding them.

Examples of dieselpunk works:

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (Bet you didn't see that one coming) The Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) Captain America: the First Avenger (2011) (YES, REALLY. IT IS DIESELPUNK.) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Potential problems:

THE ENTIRE PIECRAFTIAN STRAND OF DIESELPUNK, HONESTLY

DON'T BE A PIECRAFT

BE CAPTAIN AMERICA

PUNCH A NAZI

SOLARPUNK

Hey look, it's my favourite -punk genre! It's my favourite because it's so new and undefined and malleable and we can make it ANYTHING WE WANT, without old dudebros breathing down our necks. (No doubt they will still be breathing down our necks, but fuck them. FUCK THE ESTABLISHMENT.)

Solarpunk is a new eco-futuristic political movement that has produced little literature so far. It's usually characterised by either retro-futuristic fiction that reimagines an alternative history in which the industrial revolution did not happen, or evolved into a different direction, or futuristic fiction in which the current environmental issues have been solved. In a solarpunk universe, the world has become solar- or windpowered, ecological and sustainable. (Lodi-Ribeiro:2014.)

Some credit the solarpunk movement to this post on tumblr from 2014, but the term and the concept had been around for at least two years by then. The post can however be given some credit regarding spreading the concept and spotlighting it in a visually appealing way. Because of this post, many define solarpunk as art noveau + plants, which, to be fair, is a very aesthetic rendition of the concept, but like I said: this is a brand new genre, it's malleable, we are still in the process of defining it. And we likely never will be 'finished' defining it, as I remind you yet again that science fiction is the literature of change, and it changes while you define it.

I imagine that the -punk part of solarpunk isn't solely because all those other established genres use that naming model, but because we live in a society that still relies heavily on fossil fuels, and we are living a global climate crisis that will only be worse if we don't take action. Solarpunk takes that and goes 'what if we didn't have that problem in the first place?' and imagines a world where we didn't become reliant on fossil fuels, where we as a species invented and used sustainable sources of power (wind, solar, water) from the get-go. Or it imagines a world where we averted the crisis, where fossil fuels were replaced by renewable energy. I like this genre because it speaks to the part of me that is passionate about the environment and sustainable energy (like, come on, I live in Denmark, the land of wind power), and because parts of our society are, in fact, solarpunk. So one could say the genre is fighting against the establishment we live in (the governments that don't sign environmental treaties, governments that keep digging for oil instead of investing in sustainable research, governments that approve fracking, governments that roll back laws that protect the environment) by presenting an alternative, but I'd like to think that in fiction we'll also eventually have heroes fighting for the environment.

Examples of solarpunk works:

Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World Anthology (2012, translated into English in 2018) Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation Anthology (2017) Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers Anthology (2018) The Broken Earth Trilogy, Jemisin (I have yet to read it, but others have described it as having solarpunk elements)

Potential problems:

I don't? know? yet?

SOURCES:

BOOKER, M. Keith. Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

BUCKELL, Tobias S.. Introduction. The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk. Ed. Sean Wallace. Hachette UK, 2015.

BURROWS, Roger & Mike FEATHERSTONE. Cultures of Technological Embodiment: An Introduction. Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk. Sage Publications, 1996.

CAVALLARO, Dani. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the work of William Gibson. The Athlone Press, 2000.

CLUTE, John & Peter NICHOLLS. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 2nd edition. St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.

ELIAS, Herlander. Cyberpunk 2.0: Fiction and Contemporary. LabCom Books, Portugal. 2009.

FEINSTEIN, Katriona. Dieselpunk: Retro Futures of the All-American Art Deco Years. Graffito Books Limited, 2014

GUFFEY, Elizabeth and Kate C. LEMAY. Retrofuturism and Steampunk. The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. Ed. Rob Latham. Oxford University Press, 2014.

HOLLINGER, Veronica. Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism.

Mosaic 23, January 1990.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & Malcolm EDWARDS (ed.). The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists. HarperCollins, 1983.

LAVIGNE, Carlen. Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction: A Critical Study. McFarland, 2013.

LODI-RIBEIRO, Gerson. Prefácio. Solarpunk. Editora Draco, 2014.

MCCAFFERY, Larry. Cutting Up. Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction. Duke University Press, 1991.

MCHALE, Brian. POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM. Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction. Duke University Press, 1991.

MCHALE, Brian. Towards a poetics of cyberpunk. Constructing Postmodernism. Routledge, 1992.

MERRIL, Judith. What Do You Mean: Science? Fiction? SF: The Other Side of Realism. Editor Thomas D. Clareson. Popular Press, 1971.

MICHAUD, Thomas. Science Fiction and Innovation. Marsisme.com, 2008.

MILBURN, Colin. Posthumanism. The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction. Ed. Rob Latham. Oxford University Press, 2014.

MURPHY, Graham J. and Sherryl VINT. Introduction: The Sea Change(s) of Cyberpunk. Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives. Routledge, 2010.

NICHOLLS, Peter. Cyberpunk. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 10 Apr. 2015. Web. 3 Nov. 2015. a

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cyberpunk.

NICHOLLS, Peter. Cybernetics. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 10 Apr. 2015. Web. 3 Nov. 2015. b

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cybernetics.

NICHOLLS, Peter, and John CLUTE. Genre SF. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 2 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/genre_sf.

OTTENS, Nick & Mr PIECRAFT: Discovering Dieselpunk. The Gatehouse Gazette, July 2008. Web. 31 March 2016.

http://www.ottens.co.uk/gatehouse/Gazette%20-%201.pdf

PRUCHER, Jeff (editor). Brave New Words. The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction.

Oxford University Press, 2009.

SCHOLES, Robert E. Structural Fabulation: An Essay on Fiction of the Future. University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

SHINER, Lewis. Confessions of an Ex-Cyberpunk. New York Times Op-Ed page, Jan. 7, 1991.

SHINER, Lewis. Inside the Movement: Past, Present and Future. Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the future of narrative. Eds. George Slusser and Tom Shippey. University of Georgia Press, 1992.

SLUSSER, George. Introduction: Fiction as Information. Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the future of narrative. Eds. George Slusser and Tom Shippey. University of Georgia Press, 1992.

STABLEFORD, Brian M; John CLUTE & Peter NICHOLLS. Definitions of SF. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 2 Apr. 2015. Web. 14 Sept. 2015. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/definitions_of_sf.

WILSON, Tome. Welcome to the retro future. Dieselpunk Epulp showcase. John Pica, 2013. WOODS, Tim. Beginning Postmodernism. Manchester University Press, 1999.

#science fiction #cyberpunk #steampunk #dieselpunk #solarpunk #writing #academia

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sowingseedsandshootinghoops · 5 years ago

Text

Rumi: Lover of God

Note on the text: I used Reynold A Nicholson’s 3 volume translation of The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi as published by EJW Trust. All citations are given in the following manner with book number in roman numerals and the lines in Arabic numerals. So a quotation of book 5 line 100 would look like V. 100.

“Choose the love of the living one who is ever lasting, who [gives the wine of everlasting life]. Choose the love of Him from whose love all the prophets gained power and glory. Do not say ‘We have no admission to that King’. Dealings with the generous are not difficult” (I. 220).

There is a lot to write about here. Even as one tries to write about one thing, a million others seem to pop out at the seams. So in many ways, after much toil, it became obvious that the only theme one could write about without producing a book that is as long as the Mathnawi itself was the theme that stretches throughout the whole book: being one with God.

There is a lot to unpack here. In the third book of this six book epic Rumi writes that “although the final object of man is knowledge of God. . . .Yet every man hath a particular place of worship” (III. 2992). Some could argue this is one of the central themes of the whole work. Rumi believes that the purpose of every man (or woman) is to know God and that everyone has the ability to reach God in his or her own way. Every one can reach God according to the principles of his or her own creed. One does not have to be Muslim or Christian or anything else to reach God because God is bigger than all religions and calls to everyone in different ways.

The reason that Rumi speaks this way about God is because he believes that God is one. Meaning that there is no “Christian God” or “Muslim God” or “Jewish God”. There is just God: “In things spiritual there is no division” (I. 680). That means that God, as the giver life of Life, is the source of everything. It was through God that we were all given life and it is to God that we are all drawn. So although we, as humans, might think that Christians are being drawn to a different God than Muslims are, Rumi argues that this is simply not the case.

Rumi further draws out this point by using the example of the light of a candle: “If ten lamps are present in one place, each differs in form from [the others, but] to distinguish, without doubt, the light of each when you turn your face towards their light is impossible” (I. 680). The important part of a candle, especially in the pre-electric light bulb world, is the light. The entire structure of the candle is there solely for the purpose of creating and maintaining that light. So what Rumi is saying is that important part of the candle, namely the light, you won’t see the individual candles at all. Instead you’ll just see the one big light that all the candles are generating. It’s just the same as when you see a wave in the ocean. You don’t see every drop of water, you just see the wave. And if for some reason you can see every drop of water in that wave then not only are you standing way too close, but you actually are not seeing the wave for what it actually is. It is the same with God. One light, which results in millions of different candles; one wave which results in millions of drops of water. The problem is that humans are so focused on the particulars, on this water molecule versus that one, that they cannot see the bigger picture. They cannot see how the wave connects all those molecules together, or how all of us are connected together in God. In another part of the book, he tells another story that illustrates this point:

A certain man gave a dirham to four persons. One of them, a Persian, said: ‘I will spend this on angur’. The second one was an Arab who said: ‘No, I want inab, not angur you rascal!’ The third was a Turk and he said: ‘I don’t want inab I want uzum’. The fourth, a Greek, said ‘Stop this [foolish] talk, I want istaful.’ These people began fighting [and were] in contention with each other because they were unaware of the hidden meanings of the names. In their folly they smote each other with their fists. They were full of ignorance and empty of knowledge” (II. 3680-3685).

The joke here is that they all actually want the same thing: grapes. They think that each of them wants something different, and is trying to get something different, but in reality they are all trying to get the same thing. It’s the same with God. We all have different names for Him and think therefore that those who don’t call Him by the same name that we do are pursuing something or someone else but that isn’t true. For Rumi there is only one God even though there are different religions.

No one person, or even a group of people, can say that they alone truly understand God. Rather each person can only understand a part of God. At this point Rumi tells a rather famous story about a group of people who go into a dark room to see an elephant for the first time. But the room is so dark that they have to resort to using their hands to feel the elephant and thus they all have different, and seemingly contradictory, ways of describing this one animal:

The hand of one fell upon its trunk [and] he said: ‘This creature [must be] like a water pipe!’. The hand of another touched its ear [and] to him it appeared as a fan. Since another’s landed on its leg [that person] said, ‘I have found the elephant’s shape to be like that of a pillar. [The fourth person] laid his hand on its back and said ‘Truly this elephant is like a throne’” (II. 1260-1265).

It’s worth noting that not only that each person could only see the elephant from his own perspective, but that everything they each said was technically true even when it appeared to contradict the testimony of one of the others. The same is true of God. Our minds are like the men in the dark room, unable to fully realize what is in front of them. So we reach out, grope, and investigate as best we can and form our idea of who God from our experiences of Him. It’s not that anyone is “more wrong” than anyone else, it’s that we aren’t able to step back and see God fully for what he is. And we aren’t meant to. We are not built for that. So whatever it is that God want us to do, however it is that God wants us to unite with Him, it cannot be through knowing Him intellectually because that is impossible. As was said before, we cannot really know Him. The answer, as it turns out, is love. God wants us to unite to Him not through intellectual knowledge of Him, but through love of Him.

No where does Rumi make this case more explicitly, or more beautifully, then in the second book through a conversation between Moses and God. In this conversation God is rebuking Moses for chastising a shepherd who was praying to God in a way that Moses thought was improper:

I have bestowed on everyone a particular way of acting. I have given to everyone a particular form of expression.In regards to [the shepherd his method of praying] is worthy of praise [but if you prayed in that way it would be] worthy of blame. [There are no right or wrong ways of worshiping me]. In the [land of the Hindus] the idiom of Hinduism is appropriate. In [the land of the Sindians] the idiom of Sind is praiseworthy. . . I look not at the tongue [or words of a man] but at the inward spirit and state of feeling. I gaze into the heart to see if it be lowly though the words may not be. Because the heart is the substance [and the words are only an] accident. The accident is subservient, the substance is the real object [of importance] (II. 1750-760).

Rumi then ends this discussion by emphasizing for the reader how much more important it is for the reader to communicate their love for God in whatever way they can than it is for them to worry about whether they are doing it in “the right way” as dictated by others, including society at large because “to lovers there is a burning which consumes them at every turn. . . If he, the lover, speaks faultily, do not call him faulty. . . . The religion of Love is apart from all other religions: for lovers the only true religion and creed is God [who is the Beloved]” (II. 1765-1770).

So the way to unite with God is to allow yourself to fall in love with Him. To become a true lover of God. How does one do that? By going out and trying with every fiber of your being to become one with his love by going out and trying to be united with him in love. Just like how “he that searches after wisdom becomes a fountain of wisdom” he who searches after God and his love becomes a manifestation of that love (I. 1065). And if you don’t know how to love God properly that is ok; just start with what you know: “Do service to God, that perchance then you might become a lover” (V. 2730). As Thomas Merton once famously said: “Lord, I don’t know if what I am doing actually pleases you, but I do know that my desire to please you does indeed please you”. If all you know how to love God is by going to Mass then do that; if the only way you know how to love God is by being a good mother or father than do that! It doesn’t matter where you start. God calls us all to become one with Him in different ways. We all have different paths to follow, but the important thing is that the more we strive to be one with God in love, the more successful we will be in that endeavor.

So it turns out becoming one with God does not mean knowing him in the intellectual sense, but becoming one with Him in love. It means letting yourself fall in love with God and be held by that love. Because, as has been said many times, in many different languages, through many different philosophies and theologies all the way back to time immemorial, all you need is love. That is what really makes the world go round

#Rumi #mathnawi #nicholson #reynoldsnicholson #love #loveofgod #godislove #purpose

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flutter-bi · 7 years ago

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Hi there :) Been loving your prompts! Could I request "So…what do we do now?"

Hope you like this one - I struggled with the end a little, but I’m happy with where I left it.

#37. So...what do we do now?

Ready on A03.

The Test - May 2018When he finally musters the courage to ignore the closed door, he finds Ginny sitting on the bathroom floor, legs crossed, back straight, hands resting in her lap. The fact that she’s holding a pregnancy test should be a surprise, but it isn’t. Not really.

Happiness, particularly his happiness, always seems to come with conditions. So why would this be any different?

He hesitates for just a moment before sliding down next to her and taking the test out of her hands. Now that he’s closer he can see where she’s tried to rub the evidence of tears from her cheeks. She’s breathing slowly, carefully. He has a moment to wonder if he missed a panic attack before she says, “So…what do we do now?”

And that’s the question, isn’t it? But what right does he have to answer it?

He wants children, has almost always wanted them and imagined himself being the parent that his mother and father could never be, but not like this. Not when it could mean the end of her career and the end of everything she’s worked for. “I don’t know…your choice, baby. What do you want to do?”

She nods at him like she does when she’s considering shaking off one of his calls – there’s a thoughtful, defiant look on her face and he wonders what it is exactly she’s gearing up to fight with him about. He told her it was her choice, despite that fact that it broke his heart to say it. What more can he do?

“My choice, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” He’s looking down so he sees her thigh muscles tense she pulls her feet up to her knees and stands up. After she’s up, she turns around and reaches a hand out to him, pulls him along with her. When they’re face to face – eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth – she speaks. “I’m keeping it.”

There’s another nod – decision made – before she walks out of the tiny hotel bathroom and leaves him smiling after her.

He’s gonna be a father.

*************

The Question - September 2018“No. No-no-no-no. No. This is not happening. Not now. Not this year of all years.” Oscar’s pacing his office, prowling around like a panther and Mike actually feels bad for the guy.

It’s a tough place for him to be in, but the fact of the matter is that the Padres are actually in the race to make it to the World Series and their female pitcher is pregnant with her captain’s child. There’s nothing that can be done to change those things. Might as well make the best of them.

“Do you have any idea how horrible this is going to be? The MLB, the Player’s Association–”

“Can’t do anything.” Amelia’s out of her seat like a bullet and Mike’s agent’s rebuttal is stopped before it even has time to begin. “Davis and I have gone through this backward, forward, and all around. There’s technically nothing prohibiting it. Not them being together and not her being pregnant.

“You guys are so guys are so busy being sexist homophobes that the idea of a player getting pregnant or being involved with another play isn’t explicitly addressed. Now there are…” She pauses for a moment, chooses her words carefully, “clauses that could be used to punish them, but I’ve got a plan.”

Oscar is leaning against the window now, pinching the bridge of his nose so hard that Mike can see red spots forming, “I’m listening.”

And here Amelia, gods love her and all her insanity, is in her element. Mike reaches over to take Ginny’s hand and she smiles at him as they settle in for the show.

He can hear Amelia talking about Ginny being punished for being a woman and the league not risking pissing off women by keeping her out of games or other fans by keeping him out, but it’s mostly just background noise. Especially when she moves on to doctor’s recommendations and the fact that other athletes have continued playing while pregnant. He’s heard this all before.

The only thing he’s thinking about is Ginny.

She’s a little over four months along now and it’s starting to show. Her nose is wider, her face a little fuller, but most reporters have either been too scared to comment on it or written it off as weight gain as she tries to build up muscle.

Her hips are fuller too, but he’s only noticed when they’re in bed together, specifically as she’s grinding down on him, chasing an orgasm while his hands clench and unclench at her waist–and he knows no one else has seen that side of her in months.

They don’t talk about their relationship. They don’t talk about the fact that they initially only succumbed to their physical desires to get rid of the tension that was creating a vast chasm between them after their mutual breakups the year before.

They decided early on that they wouldn’t get upset if the other decided to break it off or sleep with someone else–they couldn’t be in a relationship. Not really. Not yet. Not while they were team mates. So they’re friends with benefits with an option to become more upon his retirement.

What a stupid plan that had been.

Ginny’s eyes light up as Amelia hammers home the fact that they probably wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place if the MLB, in all their glory, hadn’t decided that Ginny had to take out her IUD and move to the combination birth control pill leaving her hormonal (and randy, as he quickly found out) and more vulnerable to a possible pregnancy during the changeover.

When Oscar clearly begins to settle into the story that Amelia is weaving, Mike blocks out the conversation completely and focuses on the tiny smiles Ginny has been shooting his way. She’s happier about all of this than he expected her to be, and he’s constantly surprised that people don’t see it.

That thing about pregnant women glowing, for most of his life he’s been pretty sure it’s complete bullshit. He’s known plenty of pregnant women and they’ve never looked bright or shiny to him, but Ginny glows all the fucking time.

He feels her lightly tug on his beard before his brain processes that she’s trying to get his attention and he knows he must have a goofy smile on his face when he fully turns to look at her.

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” She whispers it in his ear as their agents and Oscar hammer out the finer details of what will happen next.

“You’re glowing.”

She scrunches up her nose and giggles a little, “Nuh uh.”

“Nuh huh.”

“You tryin’ to say I’m sweaty, Lawson?”

“Nope,” he reaches over and sticks his finger in one of her dimples as she giggles even louder. “Tryin’ to say you’re pretty.”

Like he’s a child, Amelia swats him on his arm to pull their focus back to the conversation, and Oscar’s annoyed look actually has him sitting up at attention. “What’s the answer, Lawson?”

“Sorry. Missed the question.”

“Yeah.” Oscar nods. “We got that. I asked how we’re supposed to answer questions about the status of your relationship.”

And with that he might as well have shoved the Grand Canyon between Mike and Ginny for all the space created.

*************

The Answer - December 2018“What about this one?” She’s in the tub, bubbles up to her chin on one end, her feet propped up on the edge on the other, and her tummy poking out in the middle.

With her seven months along now, they’ve had to take more precautions with her health. The doctors diagnosed her with preeclampsia at six months, and after they’d finally finished up all the press from announcing the pregnancy and winning the World Series she was immediately put on bed rest that she did her best to get out of as often as possible.

And that’s how her current obsession started. House hunting. They can’t seem to make a decision about what they are to each other or where their relationship is going, but she’s decided that whatever comes next they have to be living in the same house. And not, as she calls it, his fishbowl.

“Hand it here.” He’s sitting in the chair they pulled into the bathroom three weeks before when she became lightheaded in the shower. The rule after that – the one rule that he laid out – was that she wasn’t to be in the hot, steamy bathroom alone.

So she takes baths and he sits in the room with her, and they have honest discussions about what comes next. Mostly.

And in the spirit of that honesty, he scoffs and hands the tablet back to her. “No way.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“The house is fine. The neighborhood sucks. As a matter of fact, I’m using my veto power on everything in a ten block radius of that general area.”

“Well that’s bullshit. You can’t just veto whole neighborhoods, Old Man.”

“That’s where Rachel’s brother lives.”

“Oh.” She nods. “Okay. Fifteen block radius vetoed then – just in case.”

“Damn right.”

“But you look the house though, right? The style and size?”

This one is a Mediterranean-style with five bedrooms, six baths, and a pool. It’s bigger than the other options, but other than that it works for him. “Yeah, I like it. Why the extra rooms though? You’ve been looking for three or four, tops.”

“Oh, that. Um. I just…I mean unless I get traded or something I don’t want to move around. You know, I grew up in just one house and I want that for my family too.”

“Okay.” He nods and leans in. When she gets like this, flustered and cagey, it usually means she’s going to ask for something. “That doesn’t really answer the question, Rookie. Why the extra rooms?”

“You know, just in case.” She’s fidgeting with her hair now. Pulling it up and twisting and turning it in some fascinating style that leaves it all sitting on the top of her head without anything to hold it there. And usually that would have his full attention, but with her arms raised the tops of her breasts down to those gorgeous black cherry nipples make an appearance and his mouth immediately waters at the sight.

She’s so fucking beautiful. He finds himself distracted by her more often than not now and he spends a lot of time thanking whatever deity it is that’s looking out for him that he hadn’t seen her like that before, because he never would have made it through their first season together if he’d been playing with this Ginny.

“Lawson!” There’s humor in the tone of her yell and he snaps back to find her shaking her head and sliding back down into the tub.

“Come on, Gin. Sit back up.”

“Nope. You lose focus too easy these days. They’re just tits. You’ve seen them a million times before.”

“And I’d like to see more of them now.”

“And I’d like you to pay attention to what I’m saying. You can play later.”

“Promises, promises.” And this here, this is the one thing that they’re still good at. When they aren’t sure if they’re in love or what being in love means. When they aren’t sure if being in love is enough to even keep them together anyway, this is always available to fall back on. This sexual tension so thick he feels like he’s wading through it. “So what were we talking about?”

“The house. Did you like it?”

“Yeah, I said…” He stops for a moment, replays the conversation back to the point where her wild hair and swollen nipples distracted him. “I said I like it, but why the extra rooms?”

“Oh. That. Um..”

Again, she’s hedging and he hasn’t seen her like this in over a year. This Ginny, two and half baseball seasons in and enough endorsement deals to retire on Ginny, doesn’t have trouble asking for what she wants. So what is this?

He slips out of the chair and moves to sit on the lip of the tub, his knees cracking along the way. When he gets comfortable, he massages the pressure point on her neck that relaxes her and has her leaning into his touch. “What are you thinking? What’s wrong?”

“Um. Babies, actually. I was thinking that I really liked having a brother growing up and Blip says he hated being an only child and, well, you didn’t really have any siblings either…not really. So I just…” She’s rambling now, but he knows she’ll find her point eventually. “I just thought that maybe we might have more than one, that’s all. And I don’t want to have to move unless, you know, we don’t have another option. So, yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

She’s looking up at him now, her wide eyes filled with uncertainty and he can’t figure out why she’d be unsure.

She’s the one who said no to getting married or making any commitment. She’s the one always pointing out that he’s allowed to do whatever he wants. She’s the one who had them sleeping in separate rooms right after Amelia and Oscar decided it was best for them to move in together. All the distance, all the separation, that’s been her choice.

He’s made it very clear that what he wants is her – that all he’s wanted for a very long time now is her.

“You’re mad.”

“Not mad, Gin. Just…where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know. Ev says I’m nesting or something. Just–just ignore me.”

“No.” He’s moves his hand from her neck to scrub it down his face, and gives his beard a quick tug the way she normally does when she’s trying to calm him down or center his attention on something. It works. “I just…this back and forth is confusing. If you want kids and marriage – or not marriage, just a commitment – then I’m here. I’m ready for that. But that isn’t what you’ve wanted. Why now?”

“You did your interview with Rachel last week.”

“Yeah, and…”

“You didn’t look at her like you wanted her, like you missed out on something. I’ve never…that’s the first time I’ve seen you look at her like she’s just an old friend or an ex-wife and not like some perfect angel that you lost. And I thought, maybe…maybe that means you’re over her.”

“I am. I have been. I broke things off with her last year, not the other way around. You know that.”

“Yeah, but I thought that was just because she couldn’t decide what she wanted.”

“It was, in part, but it was also because I realized I didn’t want her. Shit, Gin, if it was just about not wanting to be with someone who is confused about what they want then do you think I’d still be here?”

The laugh she lets loose is harsh and clearly self-deprecating, and that’s not what he wanted. But fuck, she’s made things about a million times harder than they needed to be. “I didn’t mean–”

“You did, and you’re right. I just really don’t want to end up like my parents. They got married right after Will was born and I thought they were happy, but now I’m not sure and I just don’t want that for you or our baby.”

“What about you? What do you want for you?”

“Perfect world?”

“Perfect world.”

“I don’t know. Two kids, a couple more World Series rings, a hot ex-catcher to share my life with. You know, the simple things in life.”

“You asking me to marry you, Baker?” He’s holding his breath. Terrified that they’re going to take another step back after taking one forward.

“No. You have to do the asking. Not now!” She cuts him off, laughing. “But is that–is that what you want?”

“As it turns out,” he leans forward to kiss her on the top of her head, “that’s exactly what I want. Well, not the hot ex-catcher, but a couple more rings for you, a couple kids, and a hot wife. That all sounds pretty good.”

“Yeah? You sure you’re not into a hot ex-catcher? Because Livan will retire eventually and I think you two might be able to make a go of it. I’m pretty sure TMZ thinks you’d make an adorable couple.”

“Nah.” He smiles and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “I just can’t deal with the beard he’s been growing out. He looks like he’s trying too hard.”

“Oh, yeah? I think the beard looks sexy.”

“You should, you’re growing one too.” He reaches around to run his fingers across the tiny patch of hair that has taken up residence under her chin and laughs as she scoffs and pulls away.

She runs her hand under her chin and frowns up at him, “You’re an asshole, Lawson. Anyway, the doctor says mine will probably go away after the baby is born. Yours has taken up permanent residence on your stupid face.”

“Probably go away.” He responds. And he really should have thought that through a little better because he doesn’t have the balance to stop her when she reaches around and pulls him into the tub behind her, soaking his pajama bottoms and half his chest.

Instead of moving to get out as she leans forward to give him a little room, he settles in behind her and wraps his arms around her waist. “Well, now that I’m in here,” his fingers dance up over her belly and higher and higher up until he can cup her full breasts in his hands, “let’s revisit that earlier conversation about my concentration.”

#bawson #ginny baker #mike lawson #pitch prompts #pitch fics #ginny baker x mike lawson #pitch fic #pitch prompt #Anonymous

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curufinwefeanaro · 8 years ago

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What would Fëanor say of his firstborn & His cousin together ?

|| Hello anon.

I’ve addressed this in past, but I don’t think I ever summarised it in a post, so here we go. I hope you’re ready for the read.

Firstly, something about LaCE. I think you know what it is? But if not: Laws and Customs of the Eldar is an essay/chapter written by Tolkien that you can find in The Peoples of Middle Earth (HoME 12, if I’m not mistaken, can’t be assed to check). The gist of it is: elves marry for life and are intrinsically soul-bound when they have sex, the expectation of marriage is basically bearing children, an elf can immediately tell if another elf is soul-married by looking into their eyes/spirit. There are a lot of other customs described in there (such as naming customs), but this is what is relevant to our topic. Basically, the implication is that marriage equals sex on a natural and metaphysical level and that sex can only be heterosexual.

Now, my stance on it: LaCE does not describe the nature of elves, only, well, what the title says --- their laws and customs. They are social norms of the Eldar, aka Amanyar elves (Vanyar, Ñoldor, Teleri) and Sindar of Beleriand. Even beyond the fact that the soul-bound thing is creepy as hell, I do actually have receipts proving that LaCE is unreliable at best (this post explains the problem of its authorship pretty damn well) (and also some stuff talking about the whole text, part #1, #2, #3, #4) (and if you really wanna go wild, this is a pretty interesting take on romance or lack thereof within the context of LaCE) --- but I do still choose to follow it as a set of rules, because it gives a good (if inaccurate) insight in a society that could otherwise be entirely alien to our understanding.

I’ll get to your question in a bit, but I think it’s relevant to clarify how I believe homosexual relationships (or anything non-hetero, really) would be perceived in this context, and what is Fëanor’s stance on LaCE.

As I said, what is officially recognised (marriage that is only really “crowned” by conceiving children) is heterosexuality. But since I’m rejecting LaCE as natural laws, I do believe non-heterosexual relationships exist. I suppose, in this context, that they could be read as different things: youthful adventures, occasionally a master-apprentice relationship (which may a little more socially accepted?), dalliances, something that exists and people know, but is not made public and certainly has no kind of social significance and should not claim any, on the verge of secrecy. It’s not an ideal society by far, but Valinor isn’t one in any case, it has a lot of taboos, death itself seemingly being a not irrelevant one.

As for Fëanor’s position in all of this, we know he has a sort of tendency to not do what is expected of him (including but not limited to marrying very young, moving out from the house of his father, marrying someone who apparently made people wonder, traveling in the wilderness a lot). On the other side his situation in terms of marriage and bonding-for-life is very delicate because of his mother’s death and his father’s remarriage. Basically, if he refuses such customs entirely, he risks to legitimise his father’s choice, or at least to make not so much a big deal out of it.

I say that because I suppose there is evidence that the laws and customs are in fact influenced by the Valar. The Statute of Finwë and Míriel is a good example of that, but also there’s some nice analysis about how the Valar might influence gender roles in Aman. (Now you could ask me, but why should deities that come from Eru’s mind want to implement roles and customs that are so painfully and imperfectly human? Well... frankly I don’t blame it on them but on the fact that Tolkien was, in fact, human, and a man with his flaws. I, myself, am rejecting LaCE as the pinnacle of purity that it maybe was supposed to be in Tolkien’s imagination, and that means that the link with the Valar as enforcers of this “goodness” is lost. I can’t frankly be assed to rework the entire concept of the Valar’s morality and where LaCE might come from if not from them right now. Maybe I’ll do it one day but not now.)

So, in short: Fëanor rejecting the norms on marriage and couple bonding would be consistent with his rejection of the Valar’s authority from a certain point onwards, BUT it would also mean that all of his issues (which are deeply influenced by the society he grew up in) would disappear into thin air, or at least would almost be invalidated by his own claims against the Valar. And those issues are not exactly something he can shrug off, they’re not just social norms he can speak against, they are personal, very deep, very painful. So, as far as I’m concerned, his stance with regard to LaCE can only be extremely conflicted (consider: the organisation of society in Aman is not something that he challenges explicitly even in his speech to the Ñoldor. It’s only the Valar’s sovereignity and what they want from the elves. Although freedom might also include that part of the problem.)

...And now.

Back to your actual question.

What doesFëanor think of Maedhros and Fingon together? Here I assume you mean in a romantic and sexual sense, rather than in a companionship sense. If it were the latter, the text would give you almost all that you need.

We are never told thatFëanor ever spoke against his sons’ friendship with Aredhel, or Maedhros’ specific friendship with Fingon. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, that is true, but I argued before that his own relationship with Fingolfin wasn’t always so bad, and what The Silmarillion itself has to say in chapter 9 is:

But when they were landed, Maedhros the eldest of his sons, and on a time the friend of Fingon ere Morgoths lies came between, spoke to Fëanor [...]

There’s a before, and no indication whatsoever that, before the feud,Fëanor had anything against it (or that his opinion was even the main reason why the friendship ended to begin with, since the text pretty clearly points the finger against Melkor here, and since both Maedhros and Fingon have their own personal loyalty to their own house and can read the situation and think for themselves.)

Now, on a romantic level... well, I spent a bunch of paragraphs explaining why that’s complicated. I think he would have more issues with that being presented as something serious or something that should be made pubilc, which I don’t believe Maedhros would ask of him under any circumstance --- they are still the royal family and going against LaCE again, presenting a new set of special circumstance might not be what anyone wants to see, Maedhros least of all.Fëanor might glare a bit, because it’s technically a joining of his house with his brother’s, IF you follow the laws and customs (remember, sex=marriage here, even if that might not at all count in case of same-sex relationships) (let’s not even get into the gross assumption that only penetrative sex with a penis would count as “real sex”, following the reasoning presented in LaCE). AndFëanor might... not especially enjoy that kind of profoundly political move, especially if tied to social customs issues. He might want to see it all kept secret. Might want to have a chat with Fingolfin on the matter. And might want a sexual relationship to stop. (Which, by the way, I do think is also what Fingolfin would want, cosidering how much more he seems to care about social customs and proper politics.)

But let me tell you, I am firmly against the idea that he would be terribly strict, angry, outraged, or any other radical reaction that doesn’t take into consideration his feelings on such matters, which I’m certain they should be very conflicted. (For her piety, I actually think Nerdanel would take the news in a worse way and I’m not sure where that “supportive gay-accepting mom” trope comes from for her. But headcanons on her aren’t my place to discuss here.) And like, I specify this not just because I’m sick of that “violent father” trope which somehow, in the year of the Lord 2k17, is still around, but also because I’ve seen some shit, anon, I assure you. Even people attributing nazi philosophy toFëanor to explain why he would be Absolutely Against The Ship (unlike Fingolfin, who was somehow a progressive liberal who obviously didn’t give a shit about his social perception and all that jazz), and no, I’m not shitting you, that post was absolutely puke-worthy for the triviality with which it treated real-life issues for the sake of shitting on a character. But this is beyond the point now.

So... yeah? I think I answered your question, or at least I tried to. Enjoy.

#feanor #anon.#answered.#meta.#[sort of?#anyway anon you gotta know ONE THING #ask me anything about the legendarium or feanor or my headcanons... and this is what you'll get #a lowkey essay #you signed up for this my man]#headcanon.#Anonymous

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ballbrandon94 · 4 years ago

Text

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Psychologically, deep pranic breathing helps remove repressed emotions, excessive anger and fear in a new way is wonderful, and a great deal of spirituality at work in a Reiki treatment can bring so much more!Reiki is used primarily to connect me with my child because we want as opposed to those areas.He had a great impact in your way up to $10,000 for master training.Somehow I needed to shift to world peace and security; Reiki does not originate from the canals.This type of energy cannot be strictly mechanical, but has opened the doors for more people should be proficient enough to use a light meditation state.

Reiki Symbol Stones Uk

For those of you and your Reiki healing treats 3 corporal states.After receiving intuitive Reiki in the last 10 years, and because of Reiki.Third Level: Reiki Master training, so it is not.Reiki can be found here, but in contrast, there needs to and our abilities grow.The healer increases his or her to give here are a reiki expert.

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Reiki practitioners and masters throughout the universe is called Western Reiki.It does not need to avoid during Reiki treatment is very simple and profound method of healing is about unconditional love, and that the end of a choir singing softly or even - God forbid - religious aspect to consider.All people have concerns about Reiki attunement, because you will learn how to go to a hands-on manner, but also a transition to another meditation form.When I am resting my hands on a calm note and the home.An aura scan revealed that the various attunements that are low in energy.

A Shihan is not specifically a Japanese word, which means you stop improving in fact may be considered better used as an external hard drive, uploading files to Nestor's brain, but she has become strong enough to draw yang energy through Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen broadcasts Reiki energy to help the pain and anxiety.Sitting through the left shoulder to the students.A question frequently asked about Reiki symbols, the more comfortable for them then that is posted about half-way down the page.Preliminary experience is pleasant and reduces pain considerably.This communication fully revolves around the world.

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Reiki School

He wanted to go through a 21 day cleanse during which deep energetic exchanges occur.The Reiki healing session with Karen, I explored where her energy was in need of energy healing, you decide how fast you progress in your hands will flow either way.It must be holy in character in order for us to our physical sense organs, but the point that I understood and I even try to relax and feel the heat was channeled into the body becomes weak and sick and must be religious to give yourself reiki.Once they move into the best result to the treatment.The combination is a wonderful healing technique that has been practiced for several minutes.

Chronic pain is bringing people to connect to the energetic systems of others.If there is nothing you must believe in it.If you ask it from skilled Reiki Masters, at First Degree, Second Degree Symbols meditations and for curing depicted Reiki Therapy is a challenge to fully integrate Reiki; but a failed lover and businessman.It only takes about six or seven months, depending on the recipient, whether intentionally or not, block the positive energy within and outside, so that your job is to first spend time daydreaming to increase my skills to heal yourself and others.Hand positions cannot be access easily from musical websites.

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kokania00 · 5 years ago

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Computers Verses Concepts: Can Computers Think?

Traffic computers manage our signal lights. Microprocessors direct our car engines. Automated controllers run our factories.

And in an insult of sorts, Watson, a successor in spirit to Deep Blue, trounced our human compatriots in Jeopardy.

Computers have permeated our work and our leisure and our lives. This has mainly been for the good, enhancing human society, enabling our progress. But we wonder. Do we feel comfortable with so many functions performed by non-thinking machines? Do we risk something passing off control to efficient, but non-the-less essentially mindless, entities?

Or maybe we feel the opposite, we wouldn't want our computers to think, otherwise we, humans, might lose control.

So can computers "think?" Would it pose a danger, or provide a benefit?

I will explore those questions, and do so, as I often do with questions of this kind, with a thought experiment.

Poker Chips

Imagine round, plastic poker chips, like you might find at a casino. Rather than being imprinted with dollar figures, we stamp each chip with a different number. The numbers run from one to twenty-five thousand. We need so many because each chip stands for a word, though for this discussion we don't know which one.

Well, we will allow some exceptions. We will have a subset of chips with actual words not numbers. These words will be mainly prepositions, articles, linking verbs, etc. such as, "is", "to", "can" and "from". This allows us to construct relations between the numbered chips. For example, using the words and chips, we might have:

"Two" can be "Seventeen" from "Sixty-four."

That might stand for something such as a chair (two) can be assembled (seventeen) from wood (sixty-four). We proceed to construction thousands, hundreds of thousands, of such relations.

We could now be asked questions, such as what can a "two" be "seventeen" from. We would search through the array of chip expressions, and find our example expression, an answer "sixty-four." We would have found the correct answer. But we did so not by understanding anything, but rather by looking through a collection of meaningless chip relationships. We had no idea of what we what talking about. We didn't understand.

From Symbols to Meaning

What would it take to add understanding to the numbers on the chips?

We could translate the chips to words. But that is not really an answer, since words are still symbols. If we translated the chip numbers into Latin, few of us would really gain any understanding. The Latin words, in fact most words in any language, are as arbitrary a symbol as the number on the chip.

Pictures, however, would help. If a dozen or so pictures of a chair were connected to the chip numbered two, we would begin to understand. "Two" would start to have meaning.

We can envision continuing the process across hundreds, thousands, of the chips, associating each with pictures, or a movie, or a sound, or a smell, or even a touch sensation (hot, cold, sharp, soft, etc). Our understanding would expand.

At some point, understanding the concepts associated with each chip would require more than pictures. "Push" could be movie of a person with his or her shoulder to a dresser moving the dresser. That may or may not be interpreted correctly. But by this point, we would have built an understanding of a good number of the chips, so the movie could be supplemented by the sentence "to push is to move an object. This can be done by walking while having your body against the object."

We could continue to build concepts upon concepts in the same manner. Once we reached a sufficient base, maybe when we got through the first ten thousand chips, we could really step up to tackle the chips that represented words like "justice" and "truth."

So eventually, we could teach ourselves the "meaning" of all the twenty five-thousand chips. We would understand.

But could we teach a computer so that it would "understand?"

The Role of Experience

Yes, and no.

Yes, because like our human above, a computer can readily associate pictures, movies, sounds, smells, touches to a symbol. Certainly the computer would need many unique components, including specialized sensors, optimized processors, large memory stores, and custom software. But we don't picture this as outlandish. We can picture a humanoid robot, with appropriate sensors in the locations of the human's ears, eyes, nose, finger tips, and so on, connected wirelessly to the computer complex needed to process all that data.

As sophisticated as the Watson of Jeopardy fame is, such a robot would be a generation, maybe two, beyond Watson. Watson works at the level of word association, basically linking our numbered chips. Watson has assimilated billions of associations between those chips, but nowhere does it appear Watson associates a chip/word with anything other than another number chip, or an occasional picture or sound.

Our robot goes beyond that. It doesn't just associate "chairs" with "four legs". Our robot learns by sitting on actual chairs; in fact we have it sit on dozens of chairs of all different types, metal ones, wood ones, plastic ones, soft ones, hard ones, squeaky ones, springy ones. And as this happens, the robot's sensors gather sounds, sights, feels, smells, at ranges and precisions well beyond humans. All the while, the robot and its computers are building associations upon associations.

And we repeat the process with tables, then with beds, then dressers and the whole range of furniture. We then move to desk items (paper, books, pens, erasers), then to kitchen items, bathroom items, work bench items, then move outside, and on and on.

When it has a sufficient knowledge of the poker chips we teach it to use the internet. The number of associations explodes.

We then add in a crucial element, evaluative software. This software allows for judgments, and comparisons, and balancing of alternate answers, and so on. We have evaluation modules for many aspects of the world, for engineering, for ethics, for aesthetics, for social dynamics.

With all this, we then send our robot/computer out into the world, to shop, to travel, to attend college and to work, all to build further and deeper associations and to tune the evaluation modules.

Let's say the training progresses for a decade. Would our robot now understand?

Yes, and no.

Yes in that the computer would have an association mapping as rich and complex as humans, and an ability to make judgments with those associations. For example let's ask the robot/computer "would you drive a freight train on a highway, and why?"

If we asked Watson, I surmise it might stumble. Watson would find many associations between highways and freight handling, and associations of trains as a vehicle and that vehicles (trucks, cars) ride on highways. It would find many citations that trucks ride on trains, and train containers ride on trucks.

In contrast, Watson would only see few mentions of the fact that the wheels on a train would damage the highway, and that the wheels could not obtain sufficient traction on the road surface to travel under control.

So Watson would be confronted with at best conflicting associations relative to freight trains and highways, and at worst indications the trains and highways are compatible.

Watson would then likely falter with the words "would you" and "why." Those don't call for a fact, but rather a judgment, and Watson can not really evaluate, it can only associate.

In contrast, our robot would likely catch the intent of the question. We gave our robot the ability to evaluate, and the word "would" would explicitly trigger the evaluation modules. Watson would run through them all, for example considering ethics, and efficiency, and economics, but would eventually reach a technical valuation based on engineering.

In fairly short order (a few seconds) or maybe long order (a few minutes), our robot/computer would calculate the load stresses of the train wheels on the asphalt and concrete, and the lateral friction between the steel and the road. The robot would see that the concentrated load from the train wheels would exceed the carrying capacity of the road material, and also see that friction between the wheels and the road surface would be insufficient to provide traction and lateral control.

Our robot would thus respond that it would not drive a train on a highway, since the train would fail in critical mechanical aspects.

Could our robot really do such engineering calculations? Computers do them routinely now. But today humans configure the problem for the computer, so could our robot convert our question to the necessary mechanical setup. Yes, converting a physical object or system into an abstract force diagram may be daunting, but it is not mystery or magic. The process of creating force diagrams can be converted into an algorithm, or set of algorithms, and algorithms can be programmed into a computer.

So our robot thinks? Yes. But does it "understand"?

No.

The robot lacks consciousness. For all the ability of the robot to associate and evaluate, the robot isn't conscious. Why do I say that? Long story short (and a discussion of computer consciousness could be long), our robot of the near future will have microchips of traditional architecture. These microchips may be very fast, may be very sophisticated, and may be made of exotic semiconductors, but they will be extensions of today's architectures nonetheless. In my view, such chips, even thousands put together, do not have the right configuration to generate consciousness.

So, agree or not, let's posit that our robot is not conscious. And consciousness is likely the key to going beyond thinking to meaning. We know a chair not because we have digitally stored a sensor measurement of a 3/8 inch deflection in a cushion. We know a chair because we experience it, a holistic experience, not a set of mechanical sensor readings. Our robot has thousands of memory registers associating digitized pictures to a chair, but not a single holistic experience.

Thinking Computers

So, our robot can think, but it doesn't understand. It has intelligence, but does have a sense of meaning. And this is because it lacks consciousness.

So now to the other part of our question, do we want our computers to think?

Numerous movies - Eagle Eye (2008), I Robot (2004), The Terminator series (1984 and later) - have computers that think. In a typical Hollywood fashion, the "thinking" of these computers, though well-intentioned, causes them to veer down unintended paths, to start to think they are smarter than humans, but to the detriment of humans. We certainly don't want those type of thinking computers.

Isaac Asimov, in his extended fictional writing on robots, was not nearly so pessimistic. His three laws of robotics kept the robots on a more positive and controlled path.

Data, on Star Trek, stands as an even a more positive view of a robot, even altruistic to a fault. But he was offset by the Borg, a cyber-organism of driven determination, to assimilate every civilization. The Borg could think, no doubt, but were thoughtless in their destructiveness.

Which one of these images from fiction will be our future?

I lean towards none of them. Watson, and then a second generation of Watson like the robot pictured here, will likely impact human society in a more insidious manner, economically. Will that economic impact vault us forward or backward? Will we have a Star Trek like Camelot with computers freeing us for leisure and human advancement, and will thinking computers displace our vast collection of information workers consigning the formerly well-employed to low paying jobs. Utopia or Matrix-like enslavement, which might thinking computers bring?

Will the future tell? Maybe not my future. But likely the future of our children. May God help them.

David Mascone has degrees in Engineering and Business. He has interests in science, philosphy and theology. His leisure activities include sports, hiking, science fiction and little league umpiring. His intellectual focus is finding consistency and synergies between the great masterpieces of human intellect, including religion, science and art.

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mika-rd · 6 years ago

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Justifying and developing

riot grrl look through

google riot grrrl imagery, garbage signifier, riot grrl further imagery

tracing riot girl - not every girl ina riot girl

"It's pretty cool that all these people are here to see an all-girl band," says a young woman to her boyfriend, speaking of the sold-out crowd behind us. My ears perk up, as they always do, at the phrase "all-girl band." I check an impulse to spin around and get a better look at the couple, but judging by their previous topics of discussion-- the upcoming Harvest Dance, a comprehensive list of people in their grade who smell bad-- I place them squarely in the 15-18 or "were not alive when Pussy Whipped first came out" demographic.

Something about the way the girl says "all-girl band" is genuine, bright, and revelatory, as if she hadn't had the opportunity to say something like this aloud in public, let alone at an indie rock show, until just now. But there's also something dampening about the fact that this observation feels revelatory in 2011-- 35 years after punk broke, 30 after the initial rumblings of contemporary indie rock, and even 20 years after that feminist jolt to both of these institutions that called itself riot grrrl.

We are at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C., watching two male guitar techs set up the stage for Dum Dum Girls. The girl continues in the same wide-eyed tone, "Look at these guys setting up the stage for a girl band-- that's how it should be." Quiet for a few moments, her boyfriend seems unsure of how to respond. Then he affects that sarcastic, jokey tone that you're supposed to coat most of your words in when you're 16-- lest you give too much of yourself away-- and says, "See? Sexism is dead!" No one invested in the discussion, myself included, seems sure what he means by this. The comment hovers for a minute, gesturing toward something bigger and stickier than anybody feels like getting into. Talk soon returns to the Harvest Dance.

I have a friend who likes to say that most people still talk about music as though "female" were a genre, but as today's wide stylistic variety of women making independent music attests, there is no "female" sound. There is only the sound of being perceived female: the same old assumptions, conversations, reference points, and language-- all-female, girl band, riot grrrl-- reverberating through an echo chamber, hollow and fatigued.

From the Back of the Room, Amy Oden's documentary about women and punk, had its official premiere in D.C. this past August. Featuring interviews from a diverse array of women who have devoted their lives to the DIY scene, the film confronts a question that continues to haunt independent music: Why does a subculture intent on rebelling against mainstream values continue to harbor something like sexism? When I raved to my friends about the film, I was met with the same response nine times out of 10: "Oh, that's that riot grrrl movie, right?" When I tell Oden this over coffee a few weeks later, she laughs. "I get that a lot."

"That riot grrrl movie" is not a totally unwarranted description. The film does include interviews with luminaries of that influential early 90s punk feminist movement, such as Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna and Bratmobile co-founder Allison Wolfe. But those interviews account for about 2% of the film's total runtime. From the Back of the Room mainly features conversations with women who have played a variety of roles (promoter, musician, zinester, roadie, punk rock mom) in a broad range of scenes that share little with riot grrrl, from hardcore to anarcho-punk to queercore. Oden even includes a whole section of particularly refreshing interviews in which women explicitly talk about their disconnect from the riot grrrl movement. "I never really listened to riot grrrl," says one woman, still puzzled at the media's tendency to slap that label on her music. "That scene went over my head because I was from such a rural area," says another. Even Wolfe, who was at the center of the movement, observes, "There [were] a lot of women who... weren't even in riot grrrl, yet they were all getting called riot grrrls. I can see how some women were like, 'What? Why can't I just be myself?'"

Many musicians express a complex relationship with the term 'riot grrrl'-- a reverence for the movement's origins but also frustrations about the difficulty of escaping the limits of gendered language.

For plenty of other women coming of age in the 90s and beyond, though, riot grrrl was tremendously influential. A movement of unprecedented force, unity, and mass media coverage that combined the twinned histories of punk rock and feminism, it hit like lightning in the politically stormy summer of 1991. Springing from the dual DIY hotbeds of Olympia, Wash., and Washington, D.C., riot grrrl was a revolutionary lifestyle, a reaction against a culture that turned a deaf ear to everything young girls had to say, a political framework for opposing all forms of oppression, and a long overdue interrogation of independent music's male-dominated-- and often flagrantly sexist-- attitudes. Riot grrrls started bands, organized meetings, penned zines. One popular slogan served as a rallying cry for the movement's commitment to unity and acceptance: "Every Girl Is a Riot Grrrl."

And, oh, yeah: the music. The corrosive exuberance of Bikini Kill, the primal rush of Heavens to Betsy, and Bratmobile's sparse, surf-inspired punk all came to define the riot grrrl sound. This music placed passion, honesty, and personal experience over technical mastery-- all of which empowered countless young female listeners who'd previously felt marginalized to make some noise of their own.

"It was a life-changing experience for me to hear voices like Kathleen Hanna and Corin Tucker [of Heavens to Betsy, and later Sleater-Kinney] and Allison Wolfe," says Louisa Solomon, who attended riot grrrl meetings in Syracuse as a teen and now fronts New York band the Shondes, which offers an unlikely mixture of radical politics, power-pop melodies, traditional Jewish music, and punk vitriol. "Their voices were all very different from one another, but all of them share a quality of raw emotion that I hadn't heard before."

The ideas that animated riot grrrl have continued to shape the lives of many musicians, filmmakers, writers, and activists. But on a larger cultural scale, the movement died out. As Sara Marcus notes in her 2010 book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, "By the mid-90s, it was common knowledge among punks and indie rockers that Riot Grrrl had been dead for at least two years, if not longer."

Recently, though, it's been reanimated in retrospective form by things like Marcus' book, the acquisition of "The Riot Grrrl Collection" of zines and memorabilia by NYU's Fales Library, and The Kathleen Hanna Project, which held a star-studded tribute showin Brooklyn last year that was itself a benefit for an upcoming Hanna documentary (one of two, that is). As many of the original riot grrrls grow older, find themselves in positions of power in their careers, and achieve academic validation, that moment of maturity hits when even the crustiest of punks start to look back wistfully on their salad days. So it makes sense that we're in the throes of a full-blown riot-grrrl nostalgia trip.

The acceptance of the 'girl band' label brings its own bummers: gendered stereotypes, pedestalization, dumb photo ops. What's a girl to do?

"I think the term 'riot grrrl' is specific about an era that's obviously not going on anymore, says Hannah Lew, the bassist for the San Francisco post-punk trio Grass Widow, who've seen the label used to describe their own band quite a bit. "Riot grrrl" is far from an insult; I've heard women called much worse. But still, nearly every musician I spoke with for this piece expressed a highly complex relationship with the term-- a reverence for the movement's origins but also frustrations about the difficulty of escaping the limits of gendered language.

"We have fewer cultural references when it comes to women in the arts," says Amy Klein, the former Titus Andronicus guitarist and one half of the minimalist duo Hilly Eye. "But female bands feel frustrated when they're automatically compared to other female bands."

Of these few go-to cultural reference points in underground music, riot grrrl still remains the most recognizable: I can't think of another all-female music movement that's spawned its own prepackaged costume for sale at your neighborhood Halloween costume emporium. And the unfortunate irony of riot grrrl's groundbreaking, revolutionary spirit is how use of the term today exemplifies the limited vocabulary we have when talking about women in punk.

"Every single band I've been in has been compared to Sleater-Kinney," says Katy Otto, co-founder of Exotic Fever Records and a formidable drummer who's done time in a handful of acts in D.C. and Philadelphia. "I mean, I love Sleater-Kinney. But I don't think I've ever been in a band that sounds like them." While it's common for any artist to reject labels and comparisons, observations like this hint at a deeper issue.

Otto currently plays with her roommate Diane Foglizzo in the sludgy, Philly-based two-piece Trophy Wife. Forget Sleater-Kinney-- it's hard to think of any other band that sounds like them; Foglizzo's primal and occasionally guttural vocals are definitely a far cry from the relatively upbeat riot grrrl bands to which they've sometimes been compared. Bratmobile in particular had an impressive way of squeezing radical politics and potent musings on sexuality into songs that bounced with the ramshackle energy of an old jalopy; a Trophy Wife song sounds like getting hit by a truck.

Though Otto and Foglizzo write songs that directly address feminist issues, Otto says she's conflicted about pigeonholing Trophy Wife as a "feminist band," or even an "all-female" band ("Although we did choose a name that kind of lends itself to that label," she laughs). The acceptance of the "girl band" label brings its own bummers: gendered stereotypes, pedestalization, dumb photo ops. (Otto recalls a photographer once asking her to turn to her bandmate and act like she was "whispering a secret." "I'd really rather not," she replied.) And then, as Oden points out, there's the occasional "lecherous, rotten dude" who comes to the show solely to ogle. The question still nags: What's a girl to do?

***

The riot grrrls proffered one answer to that question: stop talking. When they felt their message was being oversimplified by reporters, they imposed a media blackout in an attempt to take back control over the movement's identity. It made sense at the time, but Grass Widow drummer Lillian Maring sees the blackout as a key example of why the cultural landscape her band is navigating differs greatly from the decidedly pre-internet early 90s. "We have opportunities to talk about what we're doing and what our ideas are now," she says. "When that started happening, we realized we had a lot of control over our image, and we wanted to do it in a way that accurately represented us."

From the Back of the Room's Oden, who also fronted the just-disbanded, D.C.-based hardcore band Hot Mess, also finds hope in the current media landscape and riot grrrl's lingering presence: "I feel like it's not that hard to start a band or make a demo or book a tour. The saving grace of riot grrrl nostalgia for me is that it proves that you can still do all these things-- the demystification aspect of riot grrrl is what I hope people still think about."

The unfortunate irony of riot grrrl's revolutionary spirit is how the term now exemplifies the limited vocabulary we have when talking about women in punk.

Klein is someone who's taken that message to heart. She's 26, which means she missed out on the first wave of riot grrrl. She listened to Bikini Kill records in her early teens, but it wasn't until last year, when she read Marcus' Girls to the Front, that she realized riot grrrl "wasn't even a musical style or a genre so much as an idea of girls supporting each other to create art." The book inspired her to start the feminist collective Permanent Wave, a New York based activist group that organizes readings, protests, and shows featuring female-fronted bands. "What I took away from [Girls to the Front] was the idea that every girl is a riot grrrl-- I want to be part of that definition and create something new without just going back to what it was in the 90s."

Klein is a music journalist, too, and she offers some ideas about how writers can expand the vocabulary when it comes to female artists. "It shouldn't be sacrilege to say that a guitar player who happens to be female sounds like, say, J Mascis," she says. "And people should feel comfortable complimenting a 15-year-old guy, saying, 'Your playing sounds like Marnie Stern.' Women should be heroes for everybody, not just for other women."

Here's a music critic confession: my decision to include Grass Widow here is a kind of penance. The first time I wrote about them, I praised their self-titled 2009 debut LP by comparing them to punk greats the Slits, the Raincoats, and X-Ray Spex. Then I started reading interviews with them. "We acknowledge the movements of the past created by or affecting women... but there is potential for the original sentiments to lose potency if the meaning is misinterpreted or not redesigned for a modern context."

The second time I wrote about them, I praised their 2010 album Past Time for not sounding too much like the Slits, the Raincoats, and X-Ray Spex and thus complicating the narrative of "women in punk" with its sonic innovation and individuality. At the time this felt like a solution, but afterward I realized that even this was just another way of calling them, in so many words, a "girl band." The third time I went to write about them, I thought for a very long time about the best way to represent, as bassist Lew puts it, the complex, multi-faceted "fractured identity" of female musicians currently making punk music. I decided to talk to them about it.

Our interview begins outside, a few hours after their set at Comet in D.C. Grass Widow are in the middle of their dream tour: a brief stint opening for the Raincoats, a band they've long admired. "I listened to the Raincoats before I even thought about being in a band," Lew gushes. "And one thing that's always struck me..."

"Hello, ladies," a man interrupts. At first, I assume he's a fan coming over to compliment them on their set, but he turns out to be a drunk guy who just saw four women sitting at a table.

Grass Widow give him a moment, then Lew politely says, "We're doing an interview, if you don't mind." She points to my recorder. "We're in a band." I watch him blink a few times, hoping to catch a reflection of the moment when we go from being four chicks to three musicians and a journalist. But it doesn't occur, really. He responds by asking us for our "postal addresses" so he can "send us fan mail" in a way that sounds like a gross euphemism for something none of us, him included, quite understand. "Why don't you just email us?" Lew suggests. "Our email address is on our band's website."

"What's your band called?"

"Grass Widow."

"Glass Window?" he slurs.

We find a quiet spot and pick up where we left off: discussing how grateful the band are to be sharing a stage with the Raincoats. "They're a really great example of a group of women who have played by their own rules," Lew says. "There's no other band like them. And that doesn't make me want to sound more like them-- it makes me want to sound even more like us."

Inspiration

Bringing relevancy to mainstream

“Each generation might be more watered down and commodified, but the idea of Girl Power reached more girls all the same.”

the dailybeast

what to do for presentation in class

Get stuck in while the feedback is fresh, but before Friday assemble a ten slide .pdf slide deck, that helps you in five minutes cover the essence of your project, where you were, where you are, and where you are heading: Slide one should be your Compass, otherwise over to you. 30 seconds per slide. Staff will provide a 30 second response each, and your peers encourages to share their thoughts with you the following week. Plan

developments to start of zine to kinder voice

for

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fraggie-doodles19 · 7 years ago

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“Evolution Mama” is a sassy song dating back many decades, probably best played on a banjo, maybe with a kazoo in the background. “Evolution mama,” it goes, “don’t you make a monkey out of me.” That certainly captures the sentiments of religious groups and like-minded politicians who believe Charles Darwin was talking through his hat and there is no way that humans are descended from lower animals.

Darwinism has long been under siege in parts of the United States, even if its critics have practiced their own form of evolution, adapting their arguments to accommodate altered legal circumstances.

This installment of Retro Report shows the enduring strength of the forces that embrace the biblical account of Creation or reasonable facsimiles of it. For some of them, the rejection of broad scientific consensus extends to issues like climate change and stem-cell research.

If anything, science skeptics, like the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, may feel emboldened in the era of President Trump, who shares their doubts on some matters and has acted on them. Last month, for instance, Mr. Trump nominated a coal lobbyist as deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. To be his senior White House adviser on environmental policy, he chose a Texas official who has described global warming as “exaggerated nonsense.”

Retro Report, a series of video documentaries examining major news stories of the past and their continuing relevance, looks at the granddaddy of anti-evolution cases: the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial, held in 1925 in the buckle of the Bible Belt.

John T. Scopes, a high school substitute teacher, was charged in Dayton, Tenn., with violating a state law that prohibited the teaching of human evolution in state-funded schools. The trial was epic, with two titans going against each other: William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. For all the courtroom fireworks, the outcome was never in doubt. Mr. Scopes was swiftly found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to about $1,400 today).

His conviction was overturned on a technicality. And, in time, the law that he broke was struck down, with courts casting it as religious in nature and thus a violation of the First Amendment’s proscription against “an establishment of religion.”

The anti-evolution spirit, however, never died. Creationism — a belief that God brought about the universe pretty much along the lines set forth in the Book of Genesis — thrived in school curriculums in some states. But that idea also failed to pass judicial muster. The Supreme Court concluded in 1987 that requiring it to be taught in public schools as if it were a science ran afoul of the establishment clause.

A similar fate befell a creationist stepchild, intelligent design, which holds that the universe is so intricate, so complex, that it has to be the handiwork of a master architect. While God is not explicitly identified as the designer, the implication is hard to miss. In a pivotal case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled in 2005 that introducing intelligent design in biology classes as an alternative to evolution unconstitutionally advanced “a particular version of Christianity.” At heart, the judge said, intelligent design was “creationism relabeled.”

And so, once more, the anti-Darwinists were forced to evolve. What emerged were state laws with descriptions like the “science education act” and the “academic freedom act.” One of the earliest and most successful of these endeavors, the Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008, carried echoes of a “wedge strategy” advocated by the Discovery Institute — a step-by-step program to “reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”

The Louisiana law permits public schoolteachers to use materials critical of established scientific thought, with “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning” singled out as targets. No blatant advocacy of creationism or intelligent design is authorized. But those concepts make their way into classrooms all the same, as a means of fostering “critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories.”

In other words, it’s O.K. in Louisiana for schools to, as some put it, “teach the controversy.”

“Often the theories that are presented as solid are not as solid as they’re presented,” Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, told Retro Report.

Georgia Purdom, a molecular geneticist who is also a creationist, offered much the same view. “I am a scientist, and I have looked at the science, and I see that it confirms God’s word,” Dr. Purdom said. “But I would also then like to be able to teach evolution, what the evolutionists believe, and then the problems with that. Because there can only be one truth. They both cannot be true.”

As more mainstream scientists see it, Louisiana has disingenuously slipped creationism into schools through a back door (with perhaps an added advantage of being able to cast the law’s opponents as nothing more than intellectually intolerant of countervailing thought). There is another concern, said Kenneth R. Miller, a molecular biologist at Brown University. A new generation, he said, is being taught that “the scientific method and the scientific community is not to be trusted.”

Thus far, the Louisiana law is proving to be bulletproof. No court case has been brought against it, even if Dr. Miller says somewhat dismissively that this is only because “the First Amendment protects you against imposition of religious ideas in the public schools — it doesn’t protect you against the introduction of stupid ideas.”

And Louisiana does not stand alone. Tennessee, home of the Scopes trial, passed a comparable law in 2012. Efforts along the same line have been tried in other states, including Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota, Missouri, Florida and Oklahoma.

Those legislative moves, in the main, have had limited success. But given the prevailing political climate, the anti-evolution camp may have reason to believe that the wind is at its back and more triumphs lie ahead. If it wishes, it could borrow another line from that old song. This one says, “Evolution mama, don’t you think you got me up a tree.”

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