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kayfabekelpie · 3 years ago

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Okay I'm posting this before I change anything else because I'm not going to be happy with it if I do. You ever have a character you can write ABOUT with some confidence but don't know how to write FOR? Anyway, for no related reason, I'm gonna go fight a skeletwink brb

2k word rambling thoughts on TMAEW No Fear Darby and what it means to fall. Darpunk. @sybilius @electricshoop

As always I'm playing fast loose and feral with canon vs fanon vs my own interpretations so here's an outline of what inspired all of this/the thoughts I was trying to work out/my base assumptions wrt How Things Work:

Avatars can chuck people into their realms at any time for any reason with or without consent (I'm 89% sure that this is true in the actual pod but I can't remember for sure/what the specifics were)

People touched by an entity who have had their fear removed can experience everything about those realms except the fact that they're supposed to be scared (I think this is confirmed by Georgie but I'm not For Sure)

Avatars of the Eye can see all parts of someone's thoughts/mindscape, not just their fears (again I feel like I remember this from the pod but that may just be fanon/porn handwaving that I'm confusing for canon and tbqh if I'm wrong on this I don't wanna be right. Mostly for porn reasons)

When Darby takes Punk to the "nothing" it's basically Punk Eyeing himself into Darby's head and then Darby trying to feel fear and he can't!! There's nothing!! What's that like because I'd like to know!! I am living through the year 2021 and scared of everything!!

Darby is functionally using lucid dreaming techniques to put himself in a nightmare scenario for fun and we love that for him

Avatars cease to be human after a while. (Also canon but not sure on the Mechanics of it all and what being not human even means)

I don't know if the green eyes thing was strictly MAG because [spoilers] or if it's an inherent aspect of the Eye but I'm here choosing that it's an Eye thing (there's something there wrt green eyes and envy and being able to see into other peoples' heads/the Eye's whole observation without participation thing but that's a thought for another time) (idek if green eyes was canon or another bit of fanon that we've all just Accepted but if I saw a fanart of Jonathan Sims The Archivist without green eyes I'd be hard pressed to figure out who he was)

I have a lot of Thoughts on whether the wand chooses the wizard on how someone is drawn to/adopted as a fear avatar but I'm working through them. Starting to figure it out was part of the driving force of this. I also kind of reference the start of a related Thought with the bit about Hangman. Tldr: 75% of Virginia is fucking EMPTY I have lived here for [REDACTED] years and I can confirm that there are places you can go here where you can be ALONE. Except for cows. Hashtag cowboy shit.

I went to a funeral one time where the speaker started the whole shindig off by saying "death is impolite" and I think I took that to heart. It definitely fuels the way Darby sees the End, at the very least. That's a Thought for another day.

Also one time I had the Tower pulled during a reading about how someone important was going to perceive me and now I'm Defensive about the card and that has possibly Affected My Perception, but I wrote the bit about the tarot card reading and then the rest of this fell out.

He was told, once - some friend with a cheap tarot deck playing at mind reader - that the Tower is bad news. That it's change, it's alteration, a fall from grace. It's upheaval, a lightning strike - Lichtenberg figures branching through veins and burning from the inside out. It's supposed to be scary. When she pulled it from the deck, she'd waggled her fingers with a grin and an exaggerated wooooooo and pronounced him cursed.

Maybe he is. Maybe that memory, the first confirmation that there's something wrong with him and other people can sense it, that it's inherent enough for the random shuffle of cards to predict, is why when he's introduced to the Vast, to the potential to fall, something clicks. The threat of feeling. The confirmation that there's nothing inside of him.

He isn't sure who first showed it to him - they all like to test him, whether or not he's lying about his fear being erased, whether or not it really was taken from him, cut off by an entity that claims a genteel nature and a sublime hand, who decided he was too young for that amount of fear and reached inside of him and touched -

Well. Someone showed him the Vast at some point - he coffin dropped during practice and then just kept falling and falling and falling. He wonders how long they all stood there waiting for him to surface, to come up kicking and screaming and panicking before they started panicking themselves when he just...didn't. Who pulled him out of the illusion, and who freaked out when he told them to put him back? He can't remember, that part didn't matter as much as the buzz in his head and the desire to fall again.

He figures out how to replicate it himself, build up the fantasy of the feelings, of the wind and the rush and weightless free fall. He crafts each aspect until there's a whole scene, a purpose, rather than just the feeling where terror should be. A tower - because despite what the Rider-Waite says, change doesn't have to be bad, stagnation seems just as horrifying - some old medieval fortress lost to time and built of stone that's trying to fall back to the earth miles upon miles upon eons below. He stands on the edge of a crumbling parapet and stares down and down and down, at the earth far enough below that the trees and grass and dirt blend together into an indistinct mess of color without shape or form. There is no lurch in his stomach, no tremble in his hands or heartbeat, just a surety that if he jumps, he will fall. Maybe he'll land. Maybe he won't. Neither option catches his breath in his lungs. He doesn't fear pain, or death, or an eternity of weightless anticipation. He doesn't fear anything. But here, on the edge, it's the closest he comes to it, to understanding what makes them all tick, why they all simper and scheme to their chosen entity.

No one else understands him, though. Some pretend to, but most just can't muster how he can feel nothing. He tries for Sting, and Sting tries for him, offers to put him underground and Bury him. Darby agrees, finds himself under miles of earth and rock, lying prone in the dark and with the weight of everything that's ever been crushing down on top of him. He feels nothing, but he does get a spectacular nap out of it - turns out dirt is the best weighted blanket. When he tells Sting, his mentor looks the worst combination of surprised and disappointed but pats him on the shoulder anyway.

He tries others, too. Malakai's darkness is pressing in a way that isn't the Buried and isn't anything else. It's as close to nothing as any of them get, and there's a quiet understanding that passes between them. The Bucks like to lock him in a maze and try to taunt a response out of him by changing the walls and the colors and the layout, making fractals dance in front of his eyes to distract him, but he just takes a stroll until they get bored and release him.

(The only thing that even slightly affects him is the Lonely. He's not sure if Hangman even means to do it, but one second they're in an elevator together at some hotel and the next they're not. He's alone. There's trees all around him, but they thin out to his left, and there's empty, rolling fields of green, blue skies and fluffy clouds, and complete and total silence. Page pulls him out after only a few moments that seem to take an eternity, rushes an apology past him and hustles out of the elevator. The experience leaves Darby - not scared, because he's not capable of that, but unsettled. The one time Kenny had dropped him into a Lonely fog with a quirk of his lips and a blink, it hadn't been...that. it hadn't been empty. Just lonely. He doesn't talk to Page much anymore.)

The tower is his favorite, his haven. It's where he ends up most nights, most times when he needs to silence his thoughts or focus or just be. Sometimes he jumps and falls and falls and falls until he surfaces back in the waking world. Sometimes he waits for sleeplessness to tip him over the edge, for the fun of the surprise when it happens. Sometimes he just sits on the edge, feet kicking into the empty air, and drifts. The wind is so loud that everything else seems easier to deal with.

The first time Punk comes into his head, Darby's just considering whether falling sounds nicer than hoping for anticipation to happen to him when someone grabs the back of his shirt and yanks him away from the edge, pulls him against a warm body, a voice shouting panicked in his ear. It takes him a second to recognize Punk.

"What the fuck," he says.

"What the fuck!" Punk responds, and then he's gone.

Darby jumps instead of thinking about it, about how Punk's hand felt like a brand on his wrist, his arm a shackle around his waist, how both felt like security. He falls until he wakes up, and avoids Punk's concern until he finally corners Darby in catering.

"I thought you didn't feel Fear," he almost accuses.

"Wouldn't you know if I did?" Darby definitely accuses right back, and Punk shoves him away.

He comes back eventually, days later. "Explain," he says from behind sleepless eyes, and Darby tries - when you don't have fear, you can choose what nightmares to try to give yourself - but he's never been good with words. He tries to show Punk, with Sting's dirt nap (Punk thrashes and screams and claws at the earth above him to try to get room to expand his chest, even when Darby tries to remind him that he doesn't have to breathe) and then with the dark finality of Terminus that even now he can fall into without much effort, that it in fact sometimes takes effort not to fall into, a haunting he can't escape from even if he isn't scared. That goes over even worse, and Punk isn't himself for a few days after. Darby forgets not everyone can look death in the eye without flinching. (He also worries a little that, maybe, it wasn't the End that put Punk off, but seeing the reason Darby calls himself half-dead, the entity that took a kid's fright and made it into another empty space inside of him. Maybe that was too personal. Darby's never been a good judge of these things.)

After that, he just gives Punk the empty void he feels naturally when he tries to summon a fear. Quiet. Stillness. Punk says it's relaxing, after everything else, everyone else, to peer into someone's deepest places and find nothing. He lays his head in Darby's lap or pulls Darby into him and it's easy. It's easy to fall into him, different from falling from his tower. This makes his heart beat in a way that the disinterest in impact never could and never will. There's no fear. But there's something else.

One night, he tries to add to the nothing. Emptiness, as always, but the sensation of falling. A hand in his. Falling together. He thinks Punk finally starts to get it.

When he wakes up, Punk's not breathing, and his heart is still. It's the closest to fear Darby has felt since the crash, since someone who was not EMS but who pretended to be looked him in the eye and cut him off, until Punk's eyes open and he comes to life. Not dead, just...other. He lies when Punk asks about it, or tells the half truth he understands, but keeps him close and keeps a hand - a brand, a shackle - around the other man's wrist so he can feel the thunder of his pulse.

It jumps when Darby touches him, smiles at him, and it kicks up double time when they kiss. If kissing is what keeps Punk's heart beating, keeps him that little bit human and that little bit away from the Eye, that little bit Darby's, then Darby is happy to kiss him.

He's also just… happy to kiss him.

He takes Punk to the tower again, eventually, but Punk won't jump. Darby does, watching Punk watch him, fading into the distance as he falls and falls and falls, but no matter how long he drops, what velocity he reaches, Punk is still the same distance away, perched on his hands and knees so the wind won't buffet him down too. Darby closes his eyes and thinks of the crumbling stone edge of the tower, and he's there, he's still. Punk startles and swears, and Darby smirks at him.

"You fell," Punk says.

"I fell," Darby confirms. Then, with a smirk, "So did you."

Punk rolls his eyes and pretends to sock him in the stomach. Darby sells it, pretends to stumble back, miscalculates the distance and -

Punk jumps after him before Darby can register that he's gone over the edge, before he can remind him that he's not actually falling, that this is all in his head and, by extension, Punk's head too. It's feeling, sensation, illusion - a dream - but he realizes in that moment that for Punk, it's real. That the detached fascination Darby feels for all of this is true terror for Punk. He reaches up for Punk's grasping hands, twines their fingers and pulls them together, chest to chest and cheek to cheek. They hit the ground at the foot of the tower with enough force to jar his teeth in his skull, and lay there as the dust settles around them. Punk is a shivering weight on top of him, so Darby has to bring them out, back to the hotel room, to the scratchy blanket and the give of the mattress, to things that are real to both of them. He holds Punk and wishes, for the first time, that he had even a little bit of the Eye's power, that he could understand how it works, so he could reach into Punk's head and find a way to reassure him. He settles for keeping the man in his arms until he stops shaking, and brings him a Pepsi from the vending machine to make him laugh.

He doesn't mention the green in Punk's eyes

He doesn't mention the heart that doesn't beat even when Darby climbs into his lap and yanks his boxers down.

He just closes his eyes and lets nothing drape around them both.

He doesn't go back to the tower again.

#tma aew crossover #darpunk #darby allin drabble #cm punk drabble

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windycitymikewrites · 4 years ago

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Get Up, Stand Up . . . On Social Media

This week, I've studied how race, gender, politics, and intersectionality all converge on social media . . . more, really, than I had intended. While I've been studying social media through an academic lens for the last month, I recently resumed participating on my personal social media platforms after a good two-month hiatus.

Then, I stopped again.

Social media once was my forum to get away from the messiness of the real world. But after a year of using it to deal with the pandemic, to stay in touch with friends and family members, to monitor election news, to mourn the repeated loss of Black lives because of police brutality . . . I was burned out from using social media.

Now, I feel myself being drawn back to my platforms of choice. Why? Because, on social media, I can remain engaged with a greater community than the five people in my household, the church community that I interact with during worship services, and the same coworkers I see on Slack and in WebEx conferences five days a week. I need to be connected to the broader community, because I can sense that another outpouring of righteous anger and activism is near.

Because too much misery is about to go down. Again.

In Minnesota, jury deliberations in the Derek Chauvin trial are expected this week-- even as the Minneapolis community and nation are reeling from the shooting and death of another unarmed Black man, Daunte Wright, by police. Closer to my home in Chicago, last week's release of a video depicting the fatal police shooting of a 13-year-old Latinx child-- who had his empty hands in the air when he was shot-- has my city on edge. Aggressions toward Asian Americans and mass shootings still are happening. By the way-- the World Health Organization warns of a global surge in Covid cases. But in the U.S., most states are looking forward to loosening pandemic restrictions-- with Michigan and Colorado facing particularly challenging new waves of Covid infections.

Too much misery. Again.

As some concerned social media users struggle to make sense of what, really, is happening to us all, others consider our posts, tweets and likes to be nothing more "Hashtag Activism." That is to say, our frustrations amount to nothing more than protest from the comfort of our screens and keyboards. It doesn't lead to actual change.

The research says otherwise. I've collected an assortment of articles, videos and other hints that activism on social media does help focus attention on discussions on race, gender, politics and more. Even better, social media helps us also to focus on the concept of intersectionality. When we discuss issues involving race, ethnicity, gender, religion, class, and politics, social media discussions constantly remind us all that we exist as members of more than one category or group. We exist as members of groups in which several different groups actually intersect. I can be Black, but I also am a woman. They can be agnostic, and also gay. He can be Christian, and also a Democrat. The combinations are endless. We are not monoliths. Treat our posts and tweets accordingly.

Feel free to explore my collection of coverage and conversations. And if you see me around on social media, feel free to engage me.

But, no sea-lioning, please. If you don't know what that is, don't worry- I didn't know, either, until last week. Click the link.

#mco335 #social media

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uwunnie · 5 years ago

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Let’s Recap: November 4, 2019

Today was a very long and strange day, but with it came hope. Before I get into that, however, I’d like to make a few important announcements.

I know I spent majority of today talking about campaigns and I did so because these projects do make a difference. Not only do they bring us closer together, but they boost morale as well. Everyone continues feeling a sense of hope and they’re also great ways to get involved in something wholesome that will make a positive impact.

When I say Starship and MX are watching and listening to us, I mean Starship and MX are listening and watching us. If they weren’t, they would have never encouraged us to continue supporting their artists, wouldn’t be online in the fan cafes, nor would Changkyun had posted a song that literally has these lyrics:

I know there’s a few discretions and a lot of concerns over the validity of various statements and if what we’re doing is even making a difference, so let me tell you something:

It is.

Look around, loves. Look at the news agencies. Look at the fundraisers. Look at the signs and read in between the lines, maybe even beyond.

What’s happening is legendary and we have the capability of prevailing, but we must keep the faith.

This situation could take a long time - months, maybe even a year or two, I don’t know. Legal battles are always difficult to confine to a specific time frame, so taking that into consideration, we must be prepared for a long journey ahead of us because we’re not cleaning a few months of piled up dirt, but rather years worth of caked-on mud.

What can bring comfort to everyone, though, is remembering that Monbebe are a family and we have seven (7) amazing boys that love us just as much as we love them, as well as the support from all sorts of other fandoms.

Stand up for the ones who were so disgustingly trafficked in vile rings built by corrupt and evil figures as if humans are considered currency.

Speak out for the ones who never had a chance to have their voices be heard; for those who were silenced before they could even part their lips.

Remember those who have had their dreams pried from their hands on account of past events, and false rumors. The ones who have given years of their life to higher ups that discarded them into the garbage without a second thought.

Remember the scapegoats.

The ones whose names have wrongly been tainted.

The ones who have been bullied to immeasurable extents, and those that continue to be harassed.

Remember them all.

Demand justice.

Demand justice for those who have been wronged and ensure that these atrocities will no longer continue.

So, with that being said, here are the current campaigns:

Messages to MX (created by @wonderlanddragon) has already begun and the official poster is right here:

Seeing as though the deadline is November 8, 2019 - we ask that your submissions be turned in soon if you choose to participate.

Bunnies for Wonho (created by @thoughtsfromaclutteredbrain) officially kicks off tomorrow and the posters are right here:

There is no deadline for this project, but we would like to get a lot out within this first week. Also, please post them with the tag #BunniesforWonho along with the two trending hashtags at the time of publishing.

The Twitter for the project can be found here.

@monxaf suggested we make donations in Monsta X’s honor to Planting Peace, and from this idea, I decided to turn this into a full fledged campaign titled Charitable Monbebes. I made a post about this project’s goal here and an official Twitter here.

There is this project I found on Twitter:

There is also a fan-art campaign and you can take @micmicyoongis absolutely stunning artwork as an example: X.

Additional projects/campaigns include:

Fundraisers

Songs

Ads

Phsyical protests

Pop culture spread

The list goes on and within the next 24 hours, I will make a list of humaniatarian charities and organizations, as well as social causes, we need to shine light upon.

Now, very quickly I will summarize today’s events and end with reminders.

Summary:

Changkyun posted to the fan cafe.

Wonho has been seen online.

The Follow mv is currently frozen from the amount of times it’s been streamed.

Starship’s official statement has given Monbebe hope.

Wonho is reportedly with a friend and is safe. It’s been stated that he’s also been watching us which means he more than likely knows about our efforts.

Our Twitter trends are still strong.

At some point, I’m pretty sure we’re going to run out of ideas and resort to using #hiChangkyun and #stonks as hashtags.

The photos involved in 🐻’s controversy have been confirmed to have been manipulated meaning that they are, indeed, fake.

If you see any sort of account offering or asking for the media mentioned above, report them.

The current tags are:

#StillHereForWonho

#절대로_포기는_안

I should also point out that #StillHereForWonho reached the top trend within 10 minutes.

Reminders:

Do not interact with *** and ***. Refrain from leaving hate comments on their profiles as well.

When participating in any handwriting project, do not use red ink or paper.

Since our tags have been trending for four days, we’ve received a lot of outside attention. Refrain from interactions and be mindful of potential attempts of people trying to take down our cause.

Beware of fake fundraisers.

Get some rest and drink some water.

I love you all - we’ve got this! ❤️

(Posted: Nov. 4, 1:37 AM US Mountain Time)

#monsta x #wonho #shownu #kihyun #hyungwon #minhyuk #jooheon #changkyun #im #joohoney #updates #monbebe

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13thgenfilm · 4 years ago

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An Experiment with Visual Storytelling from Every Zip Code — Helping us find #HOPE in the face of #TRAUMA during the time of #COVID19

Written by 13th Gen’s Founder and CEO Marc Smolowitz, this article originally appeared on THE G WORD blog in April 2020. THE G WORD is a forthcoming documentary film, directed and produced by Marc, that explodes the mythology around what it means to be gifted in the 21st century, revealing the educational challenges, social isolation, emotional sensitivities and physical threats faced by many gifted individuals in our schools and society and the search for solutions.

Back in January, I had the wonderful honor of being the main presenter at the Mid-Winter Conference of Minnesota Educators of the Gifted and Talented (MEGT). As part of my visit to the great State of Minnesota, I was asked to prepare two keynotes and a breakout session, which in many ways was an unexpected gift to me. For my part, I was able to spend significant time with my own ideas around the “state-of-the-state” of gifted and talented education, especially in states like Minnesota and others that are largely suburban and rural and increasingly becoming some of the most diverse zip codes in the nation. As I contemplated the stories we’ve been capturing for this film in many of those places, I kept coming back to a few key things that are at the heart of THE G WORD documentary -- gifted and talented education is peppered by what I broadly refer to as TRAUMATIC NARRATIVES and as such, it is vitally important that our approach to training teachers and empowering families be what trauma psychology experts call TRAUMA-INFORMED.

As I spent time developing these ideas for the Conference, I realized that while I am by no means a trauma expert, surviving trauma has been a major throughline in my life and work for the past thirty years. Without getting too into the weeds of my own personal biography (a few keywords include: HIV+, gay/queer, Jewish child/grandchild of Holocaust Survivors), I explained to this audience of thoughtful educators how there are a number of key aspects of my lived experience and intersectional identities that have helped me develop the necessary skills and resilience to navigate the treacherous waters of trauma. So much so, my personal and professional trajectory as a storyteller has naturally pushed me in the direction of making activist-driven films on topics that require me to think, in part, like a trauma-informed therapist, including -- HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ+ civil rights, racism, poverty, sexual abuse, and PTSD from military combat, natural disasters, and addiction. As I asked for a show of hands from the audience as to who had experienced trauma either personally or through a family member among the powerful categories that are listed below, literally hundreds of hands went up. This affirmed for me once again that the vast majority of Americans in the 21st century have a deep nuanced relationship to traumatic narratives and that trauma is a commonly shared experience. I pointed out that, for me, gifted and talented education is actually no different than these other very challenging topics. In fact, education can be a fulcrum for trauma. And, with our film’s intense focus on equity, we’re unearthing lesser-known traumas across every kind of zip code across our great nation. But, perhaps, more importantly, we are also unearthing hope, resilience, strength, and leadership in response to this very real and troubling fact.

From there, I emphasized how important it can be to find your own voice through unfettered yet deliberate experiments with first-person storytelling, highlighting that collective forms of empowerment are often my major focus when it comes to this sort of deep and difficult story work involving trauma. So, in the spirit of experimentation and trust, I invited folks to join my breakout session the next day where I would be sharing tools that can help educators bring storytelling and empowerment into their gifted, talented and neurodiverse classrooms. It was in that session with some 30+ brave and inspiring teachers that I piloted for the very first time THE G WORD’s new #MyGiftedStory program, which we are officially launching today, using the following very simple, yet empowering instructions:

1. Take a white piece of paper and create a sign by writing the following information on it in magic marker:

the zip code where you live and/or work;

the hashtag, #MyGiftedStory;

and, five unique words / terms/ phrases that honestly describe the challenges and opportunities that define the situation for you as it relates to gifted, talented and neurodiverse education in your zip code.

2. Take a series of vertical and horizontal smartphone photos of yourself holding up your sign to share it with the world. Stand in that photo with a sense of pride and power knowing full well that your image, likeness, and zip code story are interconnected with thousands upon thousands of others who reside in similar and different zip codes around the country, all people who care deeply about this all-important question -- In the 21st century, who gets to be “gifted” in America and why?

3. Go to https://thegwordfilm.com/my-gifted-story to upload your submission.

As you can see in the examples below, the photo results were amazing that day in Northern Minnesota, and this is just a small sampling. As the one who was witness to what unfolded in that room, this exercise was hands-down fun and empowering, and I left that day with two important take-aways: What a treat to use this exercise focused on zip codes and smartphone photography to help us get a meaningful snapshot of what’s on the minds of gifted and talented educators across the “Land of 10,000 Lakes;” and, what if we could scale this sort of photo challenge to zip codes everywhere?!

Imagine the diversity. Imagine the depth and range of humanity and emotion we could capture. Imagine the joy and hope we’d uncover in the face of great trauma.

Flash-forward to now, and here we are in April 2020. Everyone in the world is experiencing a shared form of planetary trauma with the #COVID19 public health pandemic that none of us could have ever predicted or imagined just 8 weeks ago. My humble view: the trauma of this pandemic is going to define this century, and within that powerful framing, educators, advocates, and storytellers have an important role to play in helping people of every generation find ways to heal and find hope for the future. And, we’ve got the perfect large-scale communal activity and experiment on hand to help foster that spirit!

Warmly,

Marc Smolowitz, Director / Producer of THE G WORD

THE G WORD is delighted to be launching our newest social media initiative, #MyGiftedStory.

Our entire team warmly invites you and yours in the larger gifted, talented and neurodiverse communities to contribute to what we hope will become an unprecedented visual tapestry -- one that serves to put a memorable and diverse face to #gifted, #talented, and #neurodiverse America and beyond!

PARTICIPATE NOW: https://thegwordfilm.com/my-gifted-story

#gifted #education #storytelling #visual storytelling #mygiftedstory #the g word #neurodiversity #share your story #my story #neurodiverse

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ultraenglishnerd · 5 years ago

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Multimodal Social Semiotics

Part One:

Signs and communication in all forms is based off of societal interactions and the resulting cultural demands. The division between society and culture is distinct in the way the authors use it, such that society is a collection of human interaction, whereas culture is the result of social action. Language itself also transcends the usual definition of writing, as we know well by this point in the term, but laying the foundation of society and of what language means and can include is necessary for understanding the following chapters. This concept connects as well to design, in that design rather relates to the idea of representation analyzed a bit later in the text, which, if design is taken to be the same as what we discussed last week, dictates the mode of representation and affects the overall interpretation.

The first half of the text makes important broad claims that are imperative to understanding what exactly they are talking about, such as that communication is always multimodal and that the “pace of technological change cannot possibly be mirrored by social institutions.” The latter explains why this theory is important to education and understanding multimodal social semiotics because technology has already far surpassed what social institutions can mimic and our understanding of communication and representation through these technologies and new signs has to start somewhere. The former point, that all communication is multimodal, is specifically important to this class, but also begins to point out how social factors influence the modes of our representation, making it multimodal because the outside influence of our societies have already altered the signs with which we work. The concept of interest is significantly necessary to the discussion of social semiotics as well, seeing as interest relates to design and influences the way in which we represent something and why we do it. It also works on the receiving end, the side of communication and interpretation, because it depends upon the interest of the receiver to turn a representation into communication.

Social semiotics in regard specifically to multimodality (although I suppose it always is if all communication is multimodal) gives meaning to each mode in a multimodal text, to the modes interacting with one another, and to the piece as a whole. The social signs that construct representations have meaning on multiple levels and every sign is newly made for the social situation it is being used in. Representation relies on interest of the communicator (say, me) and communication relies on reception and interpretation of interest (potentially becoming a prompt) on the end of the audience or recipient. The prompt in this sense is seemingly most important in regard to education, in which the interest of a student must be engaged and receptive to the representation of the teacher in order for a prompt to be registered within the interpreter. The final few points of note of the first section include the discussion of power, in that it influences the transparency and opacity of sign making, and how bodily communication, or signs which we receive and interpret from a three dimensional stand point, are still invaluable assets and necessary components to semiosis.

Part Two:

Considering my first multimodal text of the course (the composition process) in the terms of discourse, design, production, and distribution is decidedly tricky. In terms of discourse, I automatically made the multimodal text to reflect the highly connected culture in which I thrive, that being primarily the internet and somewhat relying on the knowledge that the interpreter of this text would know that particular Spongebob scene and who Markiplier is. Specific factors of discourse, such as my socioeconomic status and age, automatically played into the creation of the text and perhaps alienated some audiences from full comprehension. The design itself is simple as it consists solely of image and text, with the minor attempt at including audio through the link. The design relied heavily on my interest in representing my composition process to be as confusing to the audience as it is to me, while also incorporating popular pieces of media to influence understanding of who I am, seeing as this was a sort of introduction piece. Production was also fairly simple because I used a word doc and screenshots to complete the text. It turned my design concepts into a material vision that can be interacted with, such as someone could look up the YouTuber shown or type in the link to find the playlist referenced. Distribution of the text is thanks to Tumblr and the hashtags at the bottom that allow it to reach audiences outside of just our class.

The composition of this text was also done purely by me, which is interesting in regard to the importances the authors placed upon the collaborative process of moving from design to distribution. The only outside interaction that came into the creation of the multimodal text is from audience reactions and discourses that change interpretation of what they see.

Part Three:

As you can probably tell just by reading the second part, our current reading has already influenced my though process of composition. When I created my multimodal text, the interest of the representation was solely what I wanted to show, not what I wanted someone to get out of it. While I thought this was communication just because it could be read, I understand a bit better now that communication relies on the interest of the audience. The interpretation of the representation is just as important as my own interest in the matter because that is how it becomes communication and not just a sign with no meaning. It is also interesting to note now the influence that culture and society plays on the reception and creation of the text. It is clearly from a Western culture, yes, but the societal groups I participate in are obvious just from looking at the composition. This was not something I necessary intended because, while I did want to show a bit about myself in the beginning, I did not think how this would actually be interpreted and communicated to someone that most likely does not have the same interests as I do, complicating if communication was properly achieved or if I constructed a meaningless sign on the basis of representation without communication. Basically, to sum up, social semiotics influences communication and composition. For example, the multimodal texts I create would perhaps be drastically different if my social context was different in anyway, such as gender, economic status, location, age, etc.

#semiotics #social semiotics #composition theory #multimodal #representation vs communication #interest

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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April 8th-April 14th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from April 8th, 2020 to April 14th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

Has gatekeeping ever affected which comics you read? If so, how so? If not, do you think it could in the future?

DanitheCarutor

You know, I usually don't care about the person behind the work, although there is an exception. During the Twitter Pride Month event if a webcomic creator I'm following says asexuals/pansexuals/non-binary people aren't allowed/can't follow them either due to not being oppressed enough, or not being real LGBT+ people, I will stop reading their work. Afterall, it wouldn't be right since I'm not queer enough to read their work. -coughsarcasmcough- There are instances where I'll still read their comic, but with a feeling of mischievous excitement for doing something "against the rules". Although there will always be this understanding of that person hates me, coupled with a slight feeling of 'yikes' whenever I see their work. Lol It's about the same with any other type of gatekeeping, although admittedly I'm more lax about unfollowing someone if I'm not being targeted since I'm narcissistic like that.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Thats ridiculous to think an author would try to control which demographics can read their work. Artists shoudn't discriminate against certain groups in who can access their art.

RebelVampire

It does happen a lot though as all my gatekeeping experiences are about that as well, creators kind of directly shunning a specific demographic (granted not exactly @DanitheCarutor 's experience)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@DanitheCarutor Man I've never seen anything like that. I thought this post was about "only true gamers will understand" comics and such. I guess I'm lucky I've never stumbled into that side of the internet. If someone holds such views and expouses them so loudly i probably wouldn't like what they write, anyways.

RebelVampire

To answer the question more thoroughly, there have been plenty of incidents of gatekeeping that have affected how and if I read certain webcomics. However, generally speaking, they come in two specific flavors. Flavor 1: Creators basically pushing for their target audience too aggressively to the point they're either: A) insulting anyone who is not in that target audience or B) dismissing anyone not in that target audience and treating them as someone who isn't a "true" fan. which usually means their opinions are basically treated as auto invalid and not worth anything. B is more the experience I see for this flavor on my end, though honestly I don't think a lot of the creators I see do it on purpose. This particular flavor usually just effects my engagement because I generally just don't want to engage with the work at all if my opinion is going to be auto invalidated anyway. Flavor 2: Creators basically saying "Don't read my comic if you don't 100% agree with my political view(s)." This is a nope for me. A guarantee I will never read that comic again and will immediately mute said creator on my social media - even if I do 100% agree with their specific view. I cannot stand it when people literally cannot tolerate the fact that people who may think the opposite of them (or even have nuanced opinions that aren't full agreement) can still enjoy their work. Out of principle, I will not support this, and out of practicality, the audience that stays after that will probably be equally closed minded and probably not people I want to hang out with on a regular basis anyway.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I don't get the "don't even read this if you [x]" thing. I can understand if they just don't want to hear disagreements, but even silently reading?

RebelVampire

What I don't get is half the time said political view has absolutely nothing to do with the work whatsoever. So it's not like people would be going into the comic commenting disagreements anyway?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Who knows, maybe they've actually had weirdos making political comments in their comment sections and they finally had enough one day.

I do know at least one person whose (very non-political) comic has attracted a lot of politically vocal readers, and it has been a source of headache for them for a long time.

RebelVampire

Yeah I mean I don't doubt there's some comics. Usually in the little research I've done it wasn't really the comic that was getting view. THey just saw something on social media that made them angry thus had to comment on it.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

In the case I'm thinking of, it wasn't that the fans got angry at the creator's views. The fans were just openly talking about that stuff? They didn't seem to understand, nor care, that the creator didn't share their views. It's..... weird is all I can say.

My only guess is the comic got shared in a politically oriented space (forum, a FB group, whatever) and attracted some vocal readers from that space. Maybe.

RebelVampire

Possibly, although in my experience it's pretty easy for comment sections to devolve into some random political discussion. People tend to be very passionate about their viewpoints, so it really only takes one person being mad

and then relevant xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/386/ happens XD(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It might not be relevant in this case because the readers weren't arguing with each other XD just vocally agreeing with each other in someone else's space

Though yeah, I have seen it happen too, political wars in some completely non-political comic's comment section

There was a semi-infamous case

The Tiny Hippo comic in which the hippo knifes a raven that stole its toy got littered with Koreans arguing with others about the Korean-Japanese political tension. The comic... has absolutely NOTHING to do with Korea, Japan, or even Asia.

RebelVampire

omg now thats extreme

DanitheCarutor

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) Yeah, be prepared if you ever dive into the LGBT+ artist/comic side of Twitter during the Pride Month events. There are far more nice, inclusive people, but the exclusive ones are very loud and make long rant threads. Also you may get someone responding to your promos with nasty shit if you use the hashtag. This has never happened to me personally, but has happened to webcomic creators and illustration artists I follow who are very open about being asexual/non-binary/pansexual.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

To be honest, I am usually the one LGBT+ creators keep from reading their work in those scenarios. It has happened before where a creator has said something similar about ace people or hetero people not being allowed to read because "they wouldn't get it." Or sometimes even more offensive. Even if I wasn't both of those things, hearing someone be so exclusive of any group just makes me not want to support them. So yes, haha, I have definitely been affected by gatekeeping.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Theoretically, I can see where gatekeeping can be done in good faith, and possibly even respectfully. Like, there's a reason why support groups for a specific thing only allows people who are directly affected by that specific thing. Trying to educate other people on that issue, and including the allies, those things are extremely important, but a gated safe space is also incredibly valuable. You can do BOTH of those things (just not in the same place at the same time). It can definitely go wrong, though. It really can.

like "we need a safe space for lesbians to talk about their struggles" is not the same thing as "if you're not a lesbian, you don't count as lgbt" (which would be... no???)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

yeah.. I've also seen lesbian only spaces turn terf-y

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I think there is definitely a difference between gatekeeping against bigotry and blanketsweep gatekeeping against a specific group of people that you've stereotyped as bigots

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean, it's not always about keeping the bigots out

sometimes you need a safe space specifically for that group, and not the supporters of that group. That serves very specific purposes.

DanitheCarutor

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) Oh gosh, there is this one artist who's words I remember to this day. During Pride Month they made this looooong thread about how they didn't want ace people following them, how they are not allowed to use the hashtag or even be part of the LGBT+ community, then went on about how they were all just heterosexuals. The they talked about how non-binary people are damaging the trans community with their "fake gender". Very ignorant, very weird, I totally unfollowed them after that even though I really liked their art.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But yeah, Twitter is probably the wrong place to do that.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

God

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

@DanitheCarutor wtf ._.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

That's part of the reason I don't participate in Pride stuff

Because I know I would get skinned alive

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

lol, I already got skinned alive for that reason even though I wasn't advertising my comic as lgbt. That's getting off topic for reader_favorites though.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

In regards to comics, I haven't seen other readers gatekeeping a story before

But oddly more creators

Which completely boggles my mind

DanitheCarutor

Fffff yeeeah. I still try to participate in Pride stuff when I remember, but I never specify anything. I just say I'm a queer person and everyone is fine with it. Lol

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Because you'd think they want more readers, not less

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Mmm, not everyone wants more readers (or at least, it's not a priority for them)

RebelVampire

I'm kind of glad about that too. Readers gatekeeping is even worse sometimes in mainstream. So to a degree it makes me glad that the only people hurting a creators work is the creator themself, if that makes sense.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, definitely

When fans of a specific TV series try to gatekeep against specific groups, it makes me so angry

It's usually for entirely stupid reasons too

"If you're not (insert race), you're not allowed to watch this show. It was not made for you."

Haven't really seen this yet for comics, but if I ever do..... YIKES

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean I can get "It was not made for you." But that's.... not really a reason to actually disallow anyone from enjoying it.

DanitheCarutor

Oh god I'm getting SU and Rick and Morty fan base flashbacks.

RebelVampire

I think when it hits webcomics (cause I won't pretend it won't someday), I think it's gonna be in the same regard where I see it more. In that readers will be saying "If you don't agree this webcomic/ship/something is the best, you're not really a true participant in the webcomic community!"

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Honestly, I think educating people outside of these marginalized groups is just as important as validating the groups

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

like I do it all the time, I check out stuff whose target audience does not include me. I just don't openly criticize it for failing to cater to me.

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) It's absolutely important. But one can support both education and gated safe spaces! Like I can totally imagine the same people moderating a gated safe space, and holding educational seminars where everyone is welcome. Those two things serve different functions.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, I was talking about media tho, haha

Not gated safe spaces(edited)

DanitheCarutor

I imagine if it happens with webcomic it will be an extremely popular comic that will have the readerbase size of something mainstream. I've stumbled across a couple small instances where webcomic fans have been gatekeepy about fanart and such, but not real big, crazy instances.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

That would likely be one of the biggest curses about having a webcomic that's popular.

RebelVampire

Actually when I think about it more, I've seen readers start to get gatekeepy about ships on super popular comics

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Actually, yes

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Oh man, shipping wars X'D

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Ship-gatekeepers are kind of scary

Especially popular romance comics that include love triangles(edited)

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, a couple of the popular Webtoon webcomics I've followed like Gourmet Hound have had big ship wars in the comments. Actually if you want to see a good example of ship gatekeeping, you can look at any popular romance comic on Weboons, the comment section will probably be insane.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yep

True Beauty is just FULL of gatekeepers arguing about the male leads

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I like to think a lot of the seemingly vehement shipping war comments are made in jest. But even if like, 80% of them are just having fun... you know there's 19% that are actually serious... and the dreaded 1% who will actually commit a crime IRL for their ship

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Ewww... Yep

DanitheCarutor

No, Keii, you're wrong. Most of the readers on Webtoons are horny children, they are going to be very serious about their ships.

RebelVampire

Yeah that is like the problem with a lot of things on the internet. It's hard to tell who is the 80% not being serious, and who is the other 20% who is super serious and thinks the 80% are completely serious about it too(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Omg, don't call the readers out like that

DanitheCarutor

Someone's gotta tell it how it is!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@RebelVampire Yeah, that's definitely the hardest part. Trying to tiptoe around the fact that a specific commenter very well COULD be serious.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

yeeeeah

DanitheCarutor

@RebelVampire That's definitely the crappiest part about being on the internet. You can never tell just from reading words, especially if they type in a super anal way like myself most of the time. Personally if I have no idea if a reader is serious I default to responding with a dad joke or a meme... which has caused a few upset responses.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I have definitely been attacked for what I thought was an innocent comment

RebelVampire

I've learned if I don't know if the person is serious or not to just ask. Sometimes make them grumpy and you get "well obviously i was joking/being serious", but at least saves the headaches of assumptions.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

oh jeez @DanitheCarutor that sounds horrible gatekeeping

DanitheCarutor

Opinions, MMMM gotta love'em.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

A comic creator I really respected, someone I thought was super supportive of the community at large, made a blanket statement forbidding cishets from joining their big new webcomic server. The server wasn't meant for LGBTQ+ webcomics only - all comics were allowed to be discussed - so it wasn't incredibly stringent on its content, just its membership. I know it's small beans compared to other bits of gatekeeping, but it definitely made some people feel left out, and it made me feel really sad. Made me feel like... even if I somehow became friends with the creator someday, I would always be considered an other/outsider, so... why bother, you know? I haven't really felt like keeping up with their work since. It doesn't quite feel the same. I don't know if had the 'right' reaction, but the experience definitely took off my rose-tinted glasses.

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Honestly I think it’s really counterintuitive to gatekeep?(edited)

Like you want people to read your work don’t you? So can you really be so selective of people with such standards?

And if you’re a reader, gatekeeping is just going to harm the creator and make you look bad

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

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illusteresa · 5 years ago

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Consent to Plagiarize

Instagram’s trendy art hashtag

The artists and illustrators who use Instagram have been using the hashtags #dtiys and #drawthisinyourstyle since at least two or three years ago and it has grown in views and followers ever since. This tag provides consent to use a certain art work from the artist itself and create a version of said drawing in your style.

A lot of people participate, specially artists struggling with art block. Sometimes there is a giveaway to encourage illustrators to participate and this way the host of said challenge gets their art shared all over the web wining a lot of free press.

It is a great challenge and artists get their work noticed from both sides, either while hosting the event or taking part of it. It allows viewers to see the differences between styles of loads of artist but what is most seen is repetition of the structure of the host’s drawing, using the same pose and same colours.

A matter of identity

A teacher once said to us students “You don’t need a style, you need a voice”. However, in the challenge, most of the artists seem to forget that they have a voice. They bring nothing extra to the work itself. It misses interpretation and creativity, something that defines us illustrators making us stand out in the crowd.

On the other hand, I do understand that some artists just do it for fun and I respect that. However that cannot be considered great art since, for me, art depends on the idea behind it. Great art is not only outstanding in skill but shows intention and innovation and there are a lot of ways we can innovate. Great art brings something else to the table. And that is what defines an artist.

I have participated with some interpretations over time too. Without a defined style per say, I would try tweaking the colours a bit to make them brighter by creating my own pallets and only working on such if I liked the artist and had an interpretation for his or her art piece. I find it to be comforting to know it is not just a simple copy of an idea but a new point of view: my own point of view.

My entry (second image) on Alex Gold Art‘s challenge (first image). Not my most creative piece but still I managed to add a bit of myself to the late entry. As soon as I saw her work I knew what I wanted to do for it. A quick sketch was the only thing I needed in order to remember the idea and after some time I came back to it and made the final work. The idea was that it wouldn’t be the character, outside, in the snow, holding the bouquet. I would transform it into a bright environment where the background was a wallpaper and the character was portrayed inside a flower vase with her jacket’s colour since it was the same hue as clay.

I must add that the host’s work excels in creativity when she participates in these challenges and that was how I got to know her work, proving the hashtag’s efficiency when it comes to spreading the artwork beyond frontiers. As an artist, she has a distinct style and identity.

The sense of identity is not just a signature. We have opinions and they matter. They can be by using a new medium, an extreme distortion, a background story or mood, a controversial setting, a metaphorical interpretation and much more. Creativity has no boundaries.

Of course the tricky part is making sure the original art piece is still recognizable. A good balance between remake and originality is a must and that is where lays the difference between good art and excellence.

Defining oneself

This throws me towards the challenging issue of what is the role of identity in creativity.

First and foremost, there have been loads of studies about what identity is. While M. B. Brewer (I had no access to any of her works directly unfortunately) believes in a social self, showing how we portray ourselves in groups and end up “belonging” to a collective being, she also recognizes that one has an identity alone, a self-concept that comes from our own background and experiences (Jaussi, Randel & Dionne, 2007). These experiences define our interpretation and ultimately our own creativity.

Identity is what feeds the artistic style and its voice. Our identity may vary through the social environment if we connect it with behavior and influences but there are always some key features that stay within our personality. Obviously I won’t go on to define personality since I could go on forever with this, from how it came from the greek “persona” which lays in the performance we dress to present ourselves to others. The important fact is that personality is connected to identity which is connected to creativity.

As artists, nowadays it is incredibly important to have something that brings contrast to our work so it can thrive and in the end we should be truthful to what we like and what we have to say. We are humans and our opinions matter. Being creative and having the skills to show our ideas to the world is a blessing that some of us forget to use.

At long last, whatever we do, we should able ourselves to bring out a statement and the louder the better.

References

Alexander, T. (2019) New #drawthisinyourstyle event! [Online] 11th November 2019. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4u50KIj-nk/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link [Accessed: 14th November 2019].

Jaussi, K., Randel, A. & Dionne, S. (2007) “I Am, I Think I Can, and I Do: The Role of Personal Identity, Self-Efficacy, and Cross-Application of Experiences in Creativity at Work.” Creativity Research Journal. [Online] 19(2). pp.247-258. Available from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10400410701397339#aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGFuZGZvbmxpbmUuY29tL2RvaS9wZGYvMTAuMTA4MC8xMDQwMDQxMDcwMTM5NzMzOT9uZWVkQWNjZXNzPXRydWVAQEAw [Accessed: 12th December 2019]

#drawthisinyourstyle #dtiys #alexgold100k #identity

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neuxue · 6 years ago

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Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 41

EGWENE!!!!!!! And excellent use of outsider POV! And could Gawyn be more irritating? And EGWENE!!!!!

Chapter 41: A Fount of Power

Ah, the unique and entirely self-inflicted frustration of having to pause for three weeks in the middle of a major battle…

Gawyn continues to exist in this sequence and I am irritated. You’d better impede the awesome, Gawyn.

But we all know what Gawyn’s track record at the Tower looks like, so I’m not holding out a great deal of hope here.

The White Tower itself seemed to burn. It lit a daunting profile in the sky, all white and red, outlined by flames. Smoke boiled toward the midnight clouds above, fires blazed in many Tower windows, and a glare at the base indicated that outlying buildings and trees were also alight.

It’s such a great image, the once-untouchable White Tower burning against the night sky. And on a more symbolic level, it’s as if the truth is finally made visible: the Tower is burning, wounded, vulnerable, and it’s there for anyone to see.

Though right now Gawyn and the soldiers with him are more interested in seeing that there is in fact a secret entrance. And here I was hoping Gawyn might have to resort to banging really hard on the stone wall and shouting for someone to let him in, and eventually Egwene would notice him and shout down to him while lighting a to’raken on fire that she might need to take a rain check on tonight’s date, this really isn’t the best time, she has to go wash her hair.

At least he was finally doing something to help Egwene.

IS HE THOUGH?

Not all princesses want to be rescued from their fiery towers beset by dragons, Gawyn. Some of them might rather like it there. Standing in a badass hero pose, silhouetted against the night sky, surrounded by power, with their hair blowing in the wind.

She’s doing far more to help herself than you are to help her, is what I’m getting at here, Gawyn.

They were gliding directly into a war zone where both sides were stronger than they were, both sides had little reason to like them, and both sides were wielding the One Power. It took a special kind of man to stare those odds in the eyes.

‘Special’ is not exactly the word I would use.

But this frames the whole situation quite nicely: they’re heading straight into a battle in which they are hideously outmatched, with very little idea of what’s going on, for no reason but to rescue someone who has specifically asked not to be rescued. WHY.

They’ve brought a hundred soldiers with them? Again…why? What do they think that will possibly do against a Seanchan attack mounted on dragons and wielding the One Power? It’s too many for stealth, and not enough to actually have an effect. I’m just so confused as to why they’re doing this at all. You’re all going to die and to what purpose?

I suppose disguising themselves as Tower guards helps a bit on the stealth front, but still. Everything about this plan seems terrible.

“It’s always a good idea to have a few copies of your enemy’s uniform.”

“It’s not proper,” Siuan said, folding her arms. “Serving on the Tower Guard is a sacred duty. They—”

“They’re your enemy, Siuan,” Bryne said sternly.

Are they?

How long can they look at the Tower as their enemy before it becomes insurmountable truth? This is why Egwene does not want to be rescued; this is what she has learned in her time as a supposed captive of the Tower. She came here as a result of her own declaration of war against them, true, but that’s a part of this whole arc for her, realising that the Tower and the Aes Sedai there are not her enemies, that she cannot afford for them to be her enemies, even if Elaida is. That the solution must somehow be unity, not war.

Gawyn, Siuan and Bryne took up positions at the front—Gawyn and the general walking just ahead of Siuan, as if they were Warders

Gawyn Trakand, the things you do not notice could literally fill books.

All in all, the illusion was very good. On first glance, Gawyn himself would have bought the disguise.

Yeah, sorry, that’s really not a high bar.

The billowing smoke reflected red firelight, enveloping the Tower in a menacing crimson haze. Holes and gashes broke the walls of the once-majestic building; fires blazed within several of them.

It’s so starkly different from how the Tower has always been described up until now; it’s the sort of language that would much more naturally be associated with, say, Dragonmount. But the illusion of a pure white structure, beautiful and untouchable and eternal, a monument and a lasting symbol of strength, has been shattered, and beneath it is…this. A nightmare of fire and a crumbling structure and chaos, burning.

I just love the contrast, because up until now the descriptions of the Tower have been so consistent, so perfectly crafted to suit an entity that presents only and exactly the image it chooses, never changing, never faltering, never letting anyone see what is truly there. In hindsight, all those descriptions feel a bit like looping a single piece of film across CCTV footage while carrying out a bank robbery. Too perfect, too still. And so to now get these descriptions instead is perfect in its suddenness, jarring in the way a shattering is as the illusion is forcibly broken away.

Up above, near the middle of the Tower, several gashes were spewing fireballs and lighting back out at the invaders.

EGWENE! Maybe Gawyn will see her as the absolute fucking badass that she is and will realise that she is way, way out of his league, and will give up and go home and leave Egwene to be awesome in peace.

“Now what?” Gawyn whispered.

Great plan, guys.

“We find Egwene,” Siuan answered. “We start at the base, then head down to the basement floors. She was locked down there somewhere earlier today, and it’s probably the first place we should look.”

Oh, ye of little faith. How can even you, Siuan, have so little confidence in her? You’ve seen her take on a Hall that treated her like a puppet, you’ve sent her to hunt the Black Ajah as little more than a novice, you know her strength and resourcefulness and ability.

Gawyn, she’s supposed to be the woman you love, and therefore someone you should have confidence in, and assume competence of. That’s how it works, right?

Bryne, you swore allegiance to her when, again, she was to all appearances just a girl raised Amyrlin so that it would be easy to pull her strings. You gave her an army and trusted that she would know what to do with it.

And yet NONE OF YOU look at the battle taking place, and think that maybe Egwene is in the middle of it, that maybe Egwene has done what she does and found a way to turn an impossible situation to her advantage, or at least found a way to fight back. Give her some credit already!

I know, I know, based on the information they have, her situation is Hashtag Not Great, but…come on, this is Egwene we’re talking about! Even if ‘ah she’s probably found a way to be badass and claim the Amyrlin’s authority at least as a battlefield commission in order to get shit done when no one else can and save the Tower’ isn’t the default assumption, they should at least entertain the possibility that she’s managed to figure something out, that she’s found a way to fight back.

Though in Siuan’s case, I wonder if there’s an element of…projection? After all, she was a clever and capable and powerful Amyrlin, but she was dancing on thin ice for a long time with the coming of the Dragon Reborn and the secrets she held and the course she was trying to take, and she did not see the coup coming, and for all her own resourcefulness and strength she was unable to save herself from it. So from her I wonder if it’s not so much a lack of confidence in Egwene as a sense of something almost like déjà vu, of looking at this situation and being terrified that it’s happening again, that what happened to her will happen to Egwene because even the most capable can be brought down.

Gawyn has no excuse though. He’s had many, many opportunities to give his girlfriend a single vote of confidence and he always seems to…not do that. It’s very frustrating.

Oh thank the Light it’s a POV switch.

I should have known it would be Saerin trying to actually implement some sort of strategy. Or one of that group, anyway; they’re some of the few who have managed bipartisan talks cooperation and effective work towards an actual goal lately.

Around her, the room was in virtual chaos.

I think this is a case of somewhere the word ‘literal’ would actually be appropriate…

Moradri was a long-limbed Mayener with dark skin, and she was trailed by two handsome Warders, both also Mayener. Rumours said that they were her brothers, come to the White Tower to defend their sister

Okay I know we’re in the middle of a battle here but this is such an interesting little aside! On the one hand, I’m almost surprised we haven’t seen instances of the Warder bond being used between siblings, but on the other hand, speaking as someone who has a sibling…wow. That would be uh. Interesting. And yet it also makes a lot of sense, given that it is by definition an incredibly close bond requiring a great deal of trust and a long partnership…but also two brothers as Warders. What a family! I suddenly want all of the backstory here.

No Greens to be found. We know where Adelorna is, at least, but it’s really not all that surprising, if you think about it.

“A pity,” Saerin said. “They like to call themselves the Battle Ajah, after all. Well, that leaves me to organise the fighting.”

They’re the Battle Ajah, but I think that the Tower’s long tendencies towards secrecy, isolation and insulation, noninterference between sisters, and manipulation rather than outright participation in any sort of war or battle has not just had an impact on the Greens’ ability to work as anything resembling a cohesive group, but is also a set of attitudes that would end up forcing tactics over strategy in a battle situation.

Whereas someone like Saerin, or really any of the Brown Ajah who have made war and strategy a part of their studies might well be better suited to the more administrative – but oh so massively underrated and vitally important – aspects of fighting.

Saerin eyed the Green sister, then tapped the map. “Mark the locations, Moradri. You can go back to the fighting soon enough, but your knowledge is more important right now.”

Yes, exactly this. Moradri wants to be out there fighting, because that’s what her Ajah’s attitude is or has become. And because if they all see themselves as individuals acting separately, of course the impulse is to go out and fight directly, rather than recognise that they’ll actually be more successful if they coordinate, and that all of them just throwing all their firepower at whatever they can reach is not the most efficient approach.

They have fighting skills, it seems, but they don’t know how to function as any sort of military force. Because the Tower’s attitudes haven’t allowed for that sort of thinking or cohesiveness to ever emerge.

So you need the people who can stand back rather than rushing straight in to where the fighting is thickest, who can pull out the maps and watch what’s happening and bring some level of organisation to the chaos, and send out those who do have the actual hands-on fighting ability but may lack the mindset for looking at the bigger picture.

Which of course is just another of the already myriad reasons the Ajahs need to work together and maybe, I don’t know, communicate and recognise that they all have valuable but different skills to contribute and that they’re stronger and more capable as a whole than as a disparate set of individuals, but…well, that’s sort of the whole point of the Tower’s story, isn’t it? United we stand, divided we fall, and all that.

“Captain, our most important task is to form a centre of operations. Aes Sedai and soldiers alike are scrambling about independently, acting like rats faced by wolves. We need to stand together.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Not that that’s ever stopped me from spending a few hundred words trying…

It’s not just that they need to stand together, though. It’s that they need to work together, and delegate tasks, and understand that it’s not just about firepower here. That they need a centre of operations, and that means some of them hanging back from the fighting, in order to make that fighting more efficient.

And I like that it isn’t Egwene organising this. Because Egwene is so much better suited to doing exactly what she’s doing: leading from the front, by example, and demonstrating in highly effective fashion the importance of having battle-ready tacticians who can hold their own in the middle of a fight and respond quickly. Egwene is somewhat more of a tactician than a strategist, and in a way she’s an example of what the Green Ajah could and should be, because she doesn’t only consider herself, and she doesn’t approach the fight as an individual but rather as a leader, taking into account the other people around her and how they can have the most impact.

But she goes straight for the front lines; Egwene is not exactly a character to hold herself back from…anything, really. She’s not the sort of person who would be in Saerin’s role—before or after a battle, maybe, but not during one. So I like that we get to see the importance of both. That Egwene gets to be badass as the Amyrlin in battle, but we also get this quiet emphasis on how important it is for the rest of the Tower to come together, to figure out how to strategise as a whole rather than a bunch of individuals. Egwene is fighting for the Tower, but the Tower also needs to learn how to fight for itself in order to back her up, and follow that lead. And for that, they need not just a leader like Egwene, but people like Saerin who can fill those desperately needed administrative and strategic roles, and look beyond the divisions as Egwene has been trying so hard to get them to do.

I also like that Saerin explicitly acknowledges Egwene in her thoughts, because Egwene isn’t here—and shouldn’t be; she’s doing just fine right where she is—but this is largely due to her influence. She can’t play every role herself, and what she’s doing right now is probably the best thing she could possibly be doing, but this is why she’s been trying to get them to break down those barriers between the Ajahs and even between the sisters themselves. Because Tarmon Gai’don is coming, and they need all of those skills—not just the fighters, or the healers, or the strategists, or the historians, but all of them, contributing their individual strengths. Just as we see Saerin doing here.

“This is a disaster!” an angry voice shouted.

Katerine, at least fifteen minutes late and not even bringing Starbucks.

“How dare they strike here!” Katerine continued.

Yes, Katerine, we see what you’re doing. It’s something the Black Ajah has been frighteningly successful at: sowing this sort of discord and inward-looking righteous anger and doing everything in their power to keep the Tower, and the Aes Sedai within it, from looking past themselves and their status and superiority.

So she comes into this ad-hoc centre of operations trying to rile them all up, because that’s the best way to ensure that they continue to face this threat as no more than an angry set of individuals, rather than putting aside insult or anger or fear for a while in order to fight back.

“We need to scour the Tower and eliminate each of them!”

It’s such a transparent attempt to divide them, and yet they’re all so divided already that would probably work, if Saerin weren’t here to immediately stomp out the bullshit.

Saerin raised an eyebrow. “Since when did the Mistress of Novices outrank a Sitter in the Hall, Katerine?”

Katerine tries to play the Red vs Brown angle but Saerin’s response is excellent not just because Katerine is a pain in our collective arses and it’s nice to see someone give her the verbal slap in the face she so deserves, but because it completely…not just ignores but takes all the relevance out of their difference in Ajahs. Saerin is a Sitter and Katerine is not and they’re under attack and it doesn’t matter what Ajah they are.

It reminds me, really, of Egwene telling Adelorna that for now, Adelorna and the others must call her Mother and accept her authority (also can I just say as an aside how much I love that the title of authority claimed by a leader in the midst of battle is Mother? Like what a way to quietly and without even addressing it subvert military and battle gender expectations and stereotypes). Saerin’s doing a similar thing in the…centre of operations, such as it is. She claims authority through competence, and for now they have to just accept that.

This battle isn’t really about the Seanchan so much as it’s about the Tower having to confront some hard truths about itself, which means it’s a time when characters like Egwene but also characters like Saerin get a chance to shine.

Another boom sounded outside.

“Where do those keep coming from?” Saerin asked in annoyance. “Haven’t they made enough holes?”

They?

“No, Aes Sedai!” the guard said. “I think it was a blast thrown from within the Tower, launched from one of the upper floors out at the flying creatures.” “Well at least someone else is fighting back,” Saerin said.

OH YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

She doesn’t, does she? Of course she wouldn’t. Because the Tower is a mess and there’s so little communication and even those like Egwene and Saerin who are trying to coordinate an actual defence—either by enacting it with whatever resources they can reach, or by trying to form a central command hub—are isolated from one another, and no one knows what’s going on.

“It appears that there’s a second rallying point for the defence, and it’s doing very well.”

YOU DON’T SAY. Tell us more, Captain. Paint us a picture of Egwene being a force of light, a rallying point for the Tower.

Have I mentioned I love outsider POV? We’re not even seeing Egwene through any of these characters’ eyes but that almost makes it better, because as the reader you know who they’re talking about even when they don’t. You can watch them try in wonder and surprise to work it out, or to see Saerin take it in stride but also with a clear sense of relief and even excitement, and you know who is causing that, who is having that kind of impact. There’s a particular kind of delight as a reader in seeing other characters in some form of awe or respect or even just surprise or relief at what you know to be another character’s actions, but their reaction isn’t for the character, it’s for what the character has done. It’s for the awesome, even when they don’t know the source of the awesome, but as a reader you do and it’s wonderful. This is maybe a weirdly specific thing to love, but love it I do.

“Where?” Saerin asked eagerly. “Specifically?”

“The twenty-second, Aes Sedai. Northeastern quarter.”

“What?” Katerine asked. “The Brown Ajah sections?”

No. That was what had been there before. Now, with the swapping of the Tower’s corridors, that area of the Tower was…

THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANTED IT TO BE.

This slow realisation, the amazement first at the fact that there’s a strong defence at all, and then wondering who and how, and then this gradual realisation that wait, wait…

It’s not suspense, exactly, because as a reader you know exactly who and how, but watching other characters realise is just delicious.

“The novices’ quarters?” Saerin said. That seemed even more ridiculous. “How in the world…” She trailed off, eyes widening slightly. “Egwene.”

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SO MUCH.

This, this is why I absolutely adore outsider POV. It’s that sense of…triumph by proxy, that thrill of other characters realising, and really seeing Egwene for the first time in a new light, even when she’s not actually there. Perhaps even because she’s not actually there. Those moments when characters recognise something in another that you’ve known all along but seeing it through new eyes it’s almost like getting to see it again for the first time.

Also okay, I’m just a simple girl with simple needs, and so if you give me a character breathing another character’s name in astonishment and realisation, I will be happy.

It’s especially effective because this is what Egwene has been working towards for so long, and we’ve seen bits and pieces of it—of the way the other Aes Sedai see her shifting—but this is where it really seems to happen. Where someone like Saerin fully understands that this girl is no novice, that she’s not a wilfull child or a puppet manipulated into declaring herself Amyrlin. This is where, again perhaps because Egwene isn’t actually there, she and maybe the others can look past Egwene’s youth and her novice dress and see what they’ve been unable or unwilling to see before. That this woman is the Amyrlin, and she is a force to be reckoned with, and she will save the Tower by sheer force of will if she has to.

I also like how that realisation is coming right on the heels of a very different mood of outsider-POV-realisations-about-a-character with Rand. Mostly in seeing him through Tuon’s eyes, but even seeing him through Min’s when he burned Natrin’s Barrow. There, it was watching other characters finally realise just how terrifying he has become—or in Tuon’s case, you get the same impression because it’s her first time meeting him and what she sees and thinks about shows Rand in a very different light, seen through the eyes of someone who has not been watching him all along and doesn’t still see, at least a little bit, the boy from Emond’s Field.

And now you get the same thing with Egwene—the realisation that she is not just a girl from Emond’s Field claiming authority she doesn’t have, and that she is a force to be reckoned with, and that she’s so much more than they assumed her to be—but in every other aspect it’s opposite to what we see with Rand. And yet conveyed through the same techniques, and even with the Seanchan as backdrop, to some extent.

Now over to Egwene herself!

Egwene stood at an open hole in the side of the White Tower, wind pulling at her white dress, tugging at her hair, howling as if in accompaniment to her rage.

I do love these…Hero Pose Portraits we get of her. Egwene at the heart of the storm, wind in her hair and fire in her eyes. It’s a strong visual, and a very recognisable one. This is absolutely and immediately recognisable as a Hero Pose, and I suppose it’s a good example of how some tropes are tropes because damn it they work.

Her anger was not out of control. It was cold and distilled. The Tower was burning.

Are you tired of me drawing parallels and contrasts between her and Rand yet? Yes? Well, too bad.

‘Cold’ is definitely a description pretty strongly associated with Rand at this point, cold and hard and emotionless. And right at this moment, yes, Egwene is cold and calm and ruthless. She’s in the middle of a battle; she has to be. She has to be able to order the novices to form circles and fight with her, she has to be able to strike to kill, to bring down raken that may be carrying Aes Sedai captives. She has to be able to think, and to respond to the Seanchan’s attacks, and plan her own.

But the difference between her and Rand here is that Egwene uses that as a temporary state, and even then she doesn’t deny her emotions, or push them down so far that they end up stabbing her to death from the inside with their tiny spiteful knives (don’t lie to me, Rand, that’s exactly what’s going on and we both know it).

It’s like when she told herself steel yourself, Egwene, before reading through the list of dead ladies Black Ajah members. There are times when a measure of cold is needed. There are times to put emotion aside for later. But she doesn’t try to become that cold. She doesn’t try to become steel. She can harden herself to battle when she has to, and she does a bloody good job of it, but she’s not trying to flay herself into a permanent state of it as a way of dealing with what she must do.

She can embrace pain, but embracing it also means accepting and acknowledging and feeling it, and understanding that her aims are simply more important than the pain. She can steel herself to harsh truth, but she also takes a few moments to work through the emotional turmoil it causes.

It’s an issue of moderation; Egwene seems to have found a balance of sorts, where Rand has gone to an extreme. She can access that place of calm, cold determination, but she doesn’t have to take up permanent residence there (which is good because wow, here I thought America’s citizenship path was demanding). And she has a very clear sense of why she’s doing this; it’s something she has chosen, and something she will fight for because she believes it is worth fighting for. The fact that she cares is what enables her to do this at all, whereas Rand feels like he has to not care about anything in order to reach a state where he can do anything.

She directed her anger—the anger of justice, the wrath of the Amyrlin.

She can be cold in the midst of battle, but she’s channelling her anger into that rather than denying it. She is not unfeeling, here; this is not like Rand so calmly and so quietly erasing a fortress with balefire, knowing it should terrify him and yet feeling nothing at all. She is angry and she accepts that anger and both the power and the consequences of it.

And I think maybe it comes down to choices, again. Egwene can kill for the Tower because she chose her role; she may not actually want to kill people but it doesn’t threaten to destroy her when she has to, because she accepts it as part of the path and cause and role she has chosen. Not that she specifically chose the killing people part, or necessarily would have, but I think she doesn’t see it as a duty she is forced to bear, a role she is forced to play, blood that is demanded of her. She chose the Tower and she chose to be Amyrlin and she chose to leave Emond’s Field and she chose to be the person she is now and give herself to this cause, and so if this is part of it, well, then, that is what she will do. It feels like one of those lines that is both vast and yet so small, just a matter of perspective and nuance, and yet it makes such a huge difference to almost everything.

She was a fount of Power, drawn from deep within the fluted rod in her hands, channelled through a group of novices and Accepted hiding in the room behind, bound to her in circle. Egwene was part of the fires that burned in the Tower, bloodying the sky with their flames, painting the air with their smoke. She almost seemed not a being of flesh, but one of pure Power, sending judgement to those who had dared bring war to the Tower itself. Blasts of lightning stormed from the sky, the clouds churning above. Fire sprouted from her hands.

This is absolutely beautiful, and so, so similar to how Rand was described, as a force of Light, a being seemingly made of light and Power rather than flesh, channelling through a ter’angreal that shone in his hands. And at the end, fire.

It’s such an eerily similar description, and it carries the same beauty and power, and yet the context and therefore feeling it evokes is so completely different. These are the parallels I love, where the scenes are almost mirrors of each other, where the actions or situations are almost identical, and yet a simple shift in perspective or sense of agency or reasoning can make it look completely and utterly opposite.

With Rand, this image was one to evoke a sense of quiet horror, beauty and yet terror, a pause before the step across a line, the sort of silence and blinding power and then act that leaves no breath or words for making sense of what has just happened. But now, the almost identical image is one of wrath and justice and power and triumph—there’s a harshness to it, yes, but it’s all for a purpose, and there is no silent gaping absence of emotion, no moment where it seems the whole world is drawing in in horror before the release.

With Rand, the eeriness came in part from the complete absence of violence in the description. It was just beauty and power and then…that. Whereas with Egwene the violence is a part of it; the description is beautiful and she is a being of power but we have fires the burned the Tower and bloodying the sky and painting the air with their smoke and blasts and churned. There is no denial of violence here, just as there is no denial of the emotional aspect of it. This isn’t quiet the way Rand’s scene was, because nothing is being muted or suppressed here. There isn’t a sense of absence, or of something vital missing. There’s just violent, terrible, beautiful power and triumph and anger and desperate defense and vengeance and justice. No, it’s not kind. But it’s not meant to be. And so it has none of the eeriness of A Force of Light, none of the growing horror at how soft and quiet everything was contrasted with what it was.

And I like the nod here to the Amyrlin being one with the Tower, in the way we’re always given the Dragon as one with the land.

Perhaps she should have feared breaking the Three Oaths. But she did not. This was a fight that needed to be fought, and she did not lust for death—though, perhaps, her rage against the sul’dam approached it. The soldiers and damane were unfortunate casualties.

The White Tower, the sacred dwelling of the Aes Sedai, was under attack. They were all in dagner, a danger greater than death. Those silvery collars were far worse. Egwene defended herself and each woman in the Tower.

Okay, I’m glad we at least got some acknowledgement that this is on the fuzzy side of compliance with the Three Oaths, though I’m still surprised Adelorna didn’t even think about it.

For the record, I have absolutely no problems with what Egwene is doing; the Seanchan attacked first, and they’re attacking to capture or kill, and if Egwene can spin that into defending her life and the lives of all the Aes Sedai in the Tower in order to comply with the oath against using the Power as a weapon, great. But it is definitely in a slightly grey area of that particular oath, so I’m glad we’re seeing some awareness of that.

And…yeah, she’s not killing because killing is fun, but she’s also not going to be torturing herself with the blood on her hands after this. Would she have chosen this battle? No. But it’s here and this is the role she has chosen, and so this is a part of what that means, and she can accept that. Even somewhat coldly, in the moment—but again I don’t think it’s a complete absence of feeling so much as an acceptance, and a lack of…heaping unnecessary pain on herself because of the things that she has to do.

(And I’m just going to continue to ignore the ‘worse than death’ thing because I said so).

The attackers prepared weaves to strike her down, but each time Egwene struck first, either deflecting the balls of fire with a blast of air or simply bringing down the to’raken who carried the women trying to kill her.

A one-woman anti-aircraft gun.

Something I really like about this fight is that it doesn’t shy away from the fact that Egwene is in battle, with a body count, aiming to kill. It’s something that often is…avoided…with female protagonists. Implied, sometimes, but often euphemised or glossed over or never really verified on-screen. A bit like how we see Aviendha, actually; she’s a former Maiden of the Spear and it’s kind of assumed that she has been in fights and has killed people, but it’s definitely told more than shown. So you get a fair amount of that (and then there’s Tamora Pierce, doing the Good Work and providing all kinds of Ladies With Swords content), but this is definitely more rare.

And yet Egwene gets to have that, and it’s not written as a stain on her character, or as something that’s going to cause an existential crisis. It’s just who and where she is: she is the Amyrlin and the Tower is under attack and she is on the front lines defending, and that means she is in a battle, and she is fighting and fighting to kill. Just as Mat and Perrin and Rand have been. And it’s not written differently because she’s a woman, or even written in such a way as to highlight that at all. It’s just written as a powerful main character in a battle for her life and the cause she’s defending.

Between Falme and Cairhien and now this, she’s probably in the running for second-highest body count after Rand (maybe third; Mat is almost certainly higher and it’s hard to say with Perrin), but it’s not made into a Thing any more than it is for any of them. Nor is she the seductress/femme-fatale type you often see with women who have blood on their hands. She’s just…a powerful character in a position that means she sees battle, and she’s really not treated any differently in that sense than the male characters in similar positions. Which I really, really appreciate.

Some would escape. But they would pay dearly. That was another goal. She had to make certain they never attacked the Tower again.

This raid had to cost them.

And this is the other thing I like: that she’s allowed to have this edge. She is fighting on the defensive, and out of necessity, but she is also approaching it as a tactician, and it is a battle, and could turn into an ongoing war. So she’s doing what she can to prevent that, which means making it cost them—which means killing them. She’s allowed that ruthlessness, just as she has always been allowed ambition; two traits that are sometimes hard to find in non-villain female characters.

Over to Bryne now, who is busy dodging a burning raken. Probably Egwene’s welcome gift to him; she’s a bit busy to send flowers.

It’s a shame Bashere isn’t here; he’d probably commandeer one and honestly I want nothing more.

Were the Seanchan running away from something or just looking for a fight?

Not something, Bryne. They are absolutely fleeing someone and I cannot wait for you to work it out. Because watching people work out how very capable and frankly terrifying Egwene is has been the best part of these chapters.

Well, aside from Egwene herself, of course.

I don’t want Bryne to admire Gawyn’s swordsmanship because that means I have to accept that Gawyn’s good with a sword and—okay, this sentence was actually going somewhere but it got derailed when I realised I was just diving headfirst into truly awful innuendo. Ow. Well, whatever Gawyn, Galad is still the better swordsman and Mat could take both of you with a stick and Lan could probably take all three of you without breaking a sweat and—yeah, no, that sentence wasn’t any better. I give up.

Gawyn unsheathed his own blade, on edge. “Look up there,” he said, and pointed with his sword. […] “By the Light…” Bryne whispered, focusing on the gap. A solitary figure wearing white stood in the Tower’s rent.

AW YEAH.

The theme of this chapter is whispered awe at the sight or even realisation of Egwene and I am here for it.

And yes, Bryne. By the Light indeed. Even more so than you meant it, I think.

It’s just SUCH A GOOD IMAGE, a solitary figure in white, alone and yet the essence of the Tower itself, as it should be; the Amyrlin even dressed as a novice, standing in a fracture in the Tower because she is the one holding it together, holding its attackers at bay.

It was too distant to make out her face, even with the spyglass, but whoever she was

ARE YOU SHITTING ME. ‘Whoever she was’? Surely one of you at least has a fleeting suspicion at this point?

Whoever she was, she was certainly doing some damage to the Seanchan. Her arms were upraised with fire glowing between her hands, the burning light throwing shadows across the outer Tower wall around her.

Setting aside the fact that her boyfriend and her general can’t seem to recognise her, I love all these glimpses we get of her throughout the battle. We only see briefly from her POV, but to those who see her…the descriptions are all in this mode of the heroic bordering almost on the divine. A force of light and power, a solitary figure in white, arms upraised and fire in her hands, a symbol of strength and determination and everything the Tower should be. And she is always met with awe and almost wonder; it’s such a great way to show a character coming well and truly into her own in the eyes of those around her.

Except, apparently, for Bryne and Gawyn, who still don’t even consider that it could be her. WHO THE FUCK ELSE WOULD IT BE?

I am Disgruntled.

(Also, the burning light throwing shadows is again so similar to the description of Rand in A Force of Light that it’s almost hard to tell the quotes apart…and yet while the visual imagery is the same, almost nothing else is. On the one hand destruction, and on the other, salvation).

The badly wounded would be abandoned into enemy hands, but they had been warned of that possibility before coming on this mission. Recovering the Amyrlin outweighed all other concerns.

Except by ‘enemy’ he means the Tower and not the Seanchan, and he looks at the whole battle against the Seanchan as a distraction from their real purpose, and really none of them should be enemies and he just saw the Amyrlin and she certainly did not need recovering and really…everything is wrong here. None of them should be fighting, and yet they are, and all sides or contingents involved have a different thought as to who the enemy even is, and it’s just confusion and chaos because none of this should be happening at all.

“And if you’d been recognised?” he demanded. “Siuan, these people tried to execute you!”

She sniffed. “Moiraine herself wouldn’t recognise me with this face.”

Wow, okay, I’m not sure why this hit me the way it did but something about the fact that she so reflexively uses Moiraine as the reference point her …as far as Siuan knows, Moiraine is dead, and yet she has for so long been the person Siuan was closest to, the one other person who shared their secret for twenty years, her best friend and onetime lover and just the way she says it, ‘Moiraine herself’, without seeming to even think about it…I don’t know, it came out of nowhere and yet of course that’s what she would say and suddenly I’m a little bit sad.

There are a lot of reunions—or even first-time meetings—I’m hoping for before the end, but Moiraine and Siuan are very high on the list. They are the only ones left of the ones who began this, and I just want them to have a moment to see one another again and be able to share that knowledge of how far they have come and all they have done, even if it’s bittersweet, and maybe even get to finally lay that duty down and look ahead to a life in this world they’ve given so much of their lives to save.

Anyway she’s found a novice who should at least be able to tell them what’s going on, and by ‘what’s going on’ I mean ‘that Egwene is a badass and they don’t need to rescue her because she’s busy rescuing the entire Tower, so maybe they could just go help her out with that’.

“The Amyrlin, Egwene al’Vere,” the novice said in a quivering voice. “She was released from the cells earlier today and allowed to return to the novices’ quarters.”

And the novices’ quarters aren’t where they were, so there’s still some reason for Siuan and the others to not immediately put two and two together to make ‘Egwene is a badass and they don’t need to rescue her because she’s busy rescuing the Tower, so maybe they culd just go help her out with that’ but the fact that still none of them have even considered the possibility is DRIVING ME MAD.

“But she’s probably up on the twenty-first or twenty-second level somewhere. That’s where the novices’ quarters are now.”

Okay, no more excuses.

AND YET. THEY STILL. DO NOT EVEN THINK. THAT MAYBE THE GLORIOUS AND TERRIBLE WOMAN WITH FIRE IN HER HANDS AND A WHITE NOVICE DRESS IS THEIR AMYRLIN.

I am, of course, most disappointed in Gawyn who should be the one going ‘Wait! What if that was Egwene! My girlfriend is awesome and capable and maybe she’s managed to find a way to fight!’ but instead goes straight for ‘We’ve got to reach her!’

He was the one who pointed her out, even. Worst Boyfriend of the Year.

I cannot believe I have been forced to a point where I wish that, if she had to choose one of the Brothers Arthurian, she had chosen Galad. I resent this.

“You’re here to rescue her, aren’t you?” The novice sounded eager.

Bryne eyed the girl. Child, I wish you hadn’t made that connection.

What, you thought there was even a slight chance that she wouldn’t? With you storming into the Tower and talking about Egwene and immediately saying you have to go and find her? Just because you three are all being as dense as bricks about what’s right in front of you doesn’t mean everyone else is.

As much as I loved the way Saerin’s realisation that Egwene was the one organising the fight against the Seanchan, the astonishment as she said Egwene’s name and understood what was happening? That’s how much I’m annoyed at seeing Bryne and Gawyn and Siuan fail to realise the same thing.

Especially because really, they have just as much information as Saerin did, and she worked it out. More information, even; they’ve actually seen Egwene, even if they couldn’t make out her face. *Shakes head* I’m not mad; I’m just very disappointed in the three of you.

Pause for a quick Healing break because this lot have brought swords to a One Power fight.

Would [the Tower] ever be the same again, or had a seemingly eternal monument fallen this evening? Was he proud or grieved to have witnessed it?

This, I like, because it’s one of the threads running through this whole chapter—and, really, through most of the series, especially since The Shadow Rising. Now, though, the cracks that have spidered their way up the Tower are made plain for the world to see, thrown open beyond anyone’s ability to hide. It’s that destruction of the illusion of invincibility, which can utterly flip entire worldviews. The realisation that something once considered untouchable is just as vulnerable as anywhere else, and I am…somewhat put in mind of an aspect of a nation’s response to fall of another (set of) tower(s); a lot has been written about the realisation of vulnerability that caused, and the effect it’s had on the sociopolitical landscape of the entire country pretty much since then. There’s definitely a paradigm shift that occurs with that sort of realisation or fracturing of worldview.

I like Bryne’s…confusion isn’t the word I want but it’ll have to do…at whether he feels proud or grieved to be seeing this. He’s not really a part of the Tower—I mean, he serves a claimant to the Amyrlin Seat and he’s bonded now to a former Amyrlin and his focus has been on fighting to reclaim the Tower, so okay, he’s got some ties there, but he’s not Aes Sedai, and he’s not from Tar Valon, and for most of his life he has been no more tied to the Tower than anyone on this continent. But it’s been a constant throughout all that time; love it or hate it or fear it, the Tower has been the Tower for as long as anyone alive can remember. So to watch this…there could be a sense of pride, or perhaps of justice or vindication in seeing the arrogance of the Aes Sedai brought low. But at the same time…it has been a constant, and while the Aes Sedai are far from perfect, what does it mean for the world if they are show to be truly fallible? If the Tower can break, what else will follow? It’s the sense of an ending; it’s one thing to know Tarmon Gaidon is coming, but another to watch as a symbol of your time is destroyed.

No time for philosophical pondering, though, because he has to go stab a guy.

Was this one of the Bloodknives? It certainly looks to be; pity that didn’t help him against a Warder’s reflexes.

Assassins. They always seemed to look the same, regardless of the culture.

This feels like an author poking fun, and I had to laugh.

“Min,” Siuan said, sounding tired. Those Healings seemed to have taken a lot out of her. “She said I had to stay near you.” She paused. “If you hadn’t come tonight, I would have died.”

“Well,” Bryne said, “I am your Warder. I suspect it won’t be the only time I save you.” Why had it grown so warm all of a sudden.

“Yes,” Siuan said, standing up. “But this is different. Min said I’d die, and…No, wait. That’s not what Min said exactly. She said that if I didn’t stay close to you, we’d both die.”

And she proceeds to pull a poisoned needle out of his arm. So Min was right, but her viewing only ended up being true because she told Siuan about it, because if she hadn’t, then Siuan wouldn’t have paused to think about it and about the other half of it, which implies that—okay, no, that way lies brain-pain. Do Not Think Too Hard About Foretellings And Prophecies: rule number one of reading fantasy (without falling into an infinite loop).

“But I wouldn’t have been poisoned if I hadn’t come!” “Don’t try to apply logic to a viewing or Foretelling like this”

It’s like you read my mind, Siuan. Or, more likely, Sanderson. A little nod to the nature of the genre, there?

Egwene sat, exhausted, on a pile of rubble, staring out of the hole in the White Tower, watching fires burn below.

I love that this is how we begin her POV here. We’ve seen her glorious in battle, full of cold anger and justice and determination, we’ve seen other characters look to her in awe, and the Seanchan have fled from her…

And, in victory, all we see is exhaustion. Exhaustion and the aftermath—the Tower is still broken, the fires still burn. They have won, but there is a price.

It’s such an excellent contrast to the imagery and mood from the battle itself, and it’s perfect in the way so many of the battle-aftermath scenes have been in this series. It’s that sense of…only a battle lost is sadder than a battle won.

She has fought, and she has won, but while there was a sense of triumph and strength in the moment, now there’s just…exhaustion and rubble. They’ve won, but it has taken so much, and they’ve taken wounds, and it’s not truly over. And like so many battles in the series, it wasn’t even against the Shadow; it was against those who should not be enemies and yet are, because they cannot find common ground.

And…I just realised something. This was Egwene’s parallel to A Force of Light (well, parallel and inversion) but it was also her Dumai’s Wells. The Seanchan are, in a way, her Shaido; the Shaido were the catalyst for much of Rand’s early arc and steps along the path that led him to where he is now, and at Dumai’s Wells he broke free from the box he was kept in and found himself surrounded by them and thought They will pay. I am the Lord of the Morning. And then he destroyed them—or, commanded and witnessed their destruction until he couldn’t take it anymore and they fled—in a vicious battle that ended in definitive but pyrrhic victory, as well as Aes Sedai swearing fealty to him.

Meanwhile, the Seanchan were the catalyst for much of Egwene’s early arc and steps along the path that have led her to where she is, and now she has just been freed from the box-like prison cell where she was held and beaten, and she finds herself surrounded by the Seanchan and thinks They would pay dearly. This raid had to cost them, and destroys them with fire and the One Power resulting in victory, but one that comes at the high cost to the nearly-destroyed Tower, but has led to Aes Sedai accepting her authority and seems likely to lead to Aes Sedai acknowledging her as Amyrlin.

Though, of course, there’s the usual inversion of tone to a certain extent; this doesn’t feel like Egwene’s darkest hour, even with the exhaustion and destruction that follows. But I think the point is that it so easily could have been, that so much depends on perception.

It’s also just a really cool set of parallels.

A few sisters weaving Air or Water could make short work of the flames, preserving the Tower. What was left of it.

Egwene closed her eyes and lay back, resting against the fragments of a wall, feeling the fresh breeze blow across her.

Here, again, we get a sense almost of the Amyrlin as one with the Tower. Victorious, technically, but beaten and exhausted and still burning, unable to do anything but lie back against the fragments of what was. With the wind, of course. Of course a wind rises, here.

Egwene wanted to help. A part of her did, at least. A sliver. But Light, she was tired! She couldn’t channel another trickle, not even using the sa’angreal. She’d pushed the limits of what she could manage. But she was so worn out now that she woudn’t be able to embrace the Source if she tried.

Oh, Egwene. It is a heavy mountain to carry, even if it is one she has largely chosen, or believes she has chosen. But she has been through so much in the last…well, twelve books but particularly the last few weeks, and she just faced the strength of the Seanchan while barely able to channel unaided, and still the Tower is broken and still there is more to do and she wants to help but there are limits and she is far past them.

Not that that always stops her, but…there’s a sense here not quite of despair but I guess that she’s been doing too much of this alone for too long. She’s held the Tower together and defended it all while those within it have tried to break her even as the Tower itself was breaking—the Tower is one with the Amyrlin and the Amyrlin is one with the Tower—and maybe now it’s up to some of them to put the fires out. To begin the repair. To help her hold the Tower together, because there’s no point if they don’t join her; there’s no point in her holding it up if the Aes Sedai don’t rally to the same cause.

And so perhaps it’s not up to her to help, here. She has done what she can for them, and she will continue to do more, but right now it’s time for them to take some steps of their own, to decide whether the Tower will in fact be saved, or whether they will let it fall.

She’d fought. She’d been glorious and destructive, the Amyrlin of judgement and fury, Green Ajah to the core. And still, the Tower had burned.

This is so, so lovely. I love that glorious and destructive are the words she chooses. There is absolutely a salvation/destruction duality to what she has done here, and I’m not even going to parallel it with Rand’s own entire character and story of salvation and destruction, but instead I just think it’s perfect for her situation and for the Tower itself.

She fought, and fought beautifully, and despite all her power and determination, the Tower burned. Because it can’t just be her; for the Tower to stand, it has to be unified. There is only so much she can do alone, and until the others truly join her and decide for themselves to save the Tower, she can only just hold it together, no matter how strong she is. She can lead, but only if they decide to follow. Otherwise she is holding together an empty shell of a memory of a possibility.

I just love aftermath scenes.

So much.

Especially the way they’re done in this series. Joyful or despairing, gloriously alive or exhausted, bittersweet or just bitter, triumphant or anticlimactic, they’re so varied and yet so perfectly suited to what they follow.

Egwene has done everything she possibly can and more, and yet the Tower is still crumbling around her, and so this almost-despairing exaustion is perfect, because what more can she do? Alone, nothing. And yet she can’t give up, can’t stop trying.

The White Tower was broken, physically now as well as spiritually. They’d need a strong leader to rebuild. The next few days would be pivotal. It made her more than exhausted to consider the work she’d need to do.

I’ve talked a lot about how Egwene is a hero-by-choice rather than a Chosen One, but I like that she gets to have these moments where…despite all of that, sometimes it’s really fucking hard. She belives in what she is doing, and embraces her role, and has a sense of agency that many heroes lack because she did choose, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be pushed past the limits of her own endurance. It doesn’t mean she is immune to despair or to doubt or to sheer tiredness. So much has been asked of her, and she has taken so much upon herself, and there’s still so much more to do, and she’ll do it, but right now…well, I can’t blame her for wanting just a few moments to rest.

She had protected many. She had resisted and fought. But this day would still mark one of the greatest disasters in the history of the Aes Sedai.

Can’t think of that, she told herself. Have to focus on what to do to fix things…

You can almost see her all but physically dragging herself out of that beckoning despair. She’s done everything, and still it’s not enough.

She has saved many but what will be remembered is the destruction, and oh, how familiar that sounds. It’s Rand after so many battles, after so much death and pain and people who hate him for tearing nations apart because it’s the only way to save the world. It’s Rand as a figure, hated and feared and yet the world’s hope for salvation. Seen as a monster but demanded as a saviour. It’s the duality not just of salvation and destruction but of perception and reality, of achievement and cost.

She fought and was glorious and still today will be remembered as a disaster, and how easy it would be to give in to that, to let it drag her down, but she can’t and so she pulls herself back up because if she doesn’t, then they are all lost.

She would get up soon. She would lead the novices and Aes Sedai on thse upper floors as they cleaned up and assessed the damage. She would be strong and capable. The others would be tempted to fall into despair, and she needed to be positive. For them.

And for herself. In a moment, she will be the Amyrlin again…

But she could take a few minutes. She just needed to rest for a little while…

And remember a girl named Egwene al’Vere…

Oh, Egwene. You can only do so much alone.

She barely noticed when someone picked her up.

NO. NO NO NO NO NO.

She tiredly opened her eyes, and—thought numb of mind—was astonished to find that she was being carried by Gawyn Trakand.

I DO NOT WANT THIS.

“I’ve got you, Egwene,” he said, glancing down. “I’ll protect you.”

DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT SHE HAS DONE? DO YOU? ‘I’ll protect you’ IT’S A LITTLE LATE FOR THAT, SHE’S ALREADY SEEN TO THAT HERSELF. And not just protecting herself but the whole damn Tower. That’s why she’s tired, Gawyn, or hadn’t you noticed? Do you think she just…decided to nap through the battle or have you finally figured it out?

And she doesn’t want to be ‘rescued’ but she’s too tired to say anything and I’m so very indignant on her behalf.

“They just left her there, Siuan,” Gawyn said. His voice was so nice to hear.

IS IT THOUGH? He still assumes she was just…left there. That she did nothing. That she was in need of rescue because of course she couldn’t possible be tired from having basically fought the entire damn battle on her own.

“Defenceless in the hallway! Anyone could have come upon her like that. What if the Seanchan had discovered her?”

WHAT IF

THE SEANCHAN

HAD DISCOVERED HER

I can barely breathe I’m laughing so hard at the wall of unintentional irony upon which I am now going to hit my head repeatedly.

Gawyn you idiot.

Seriously, the degree to which I find it frustrating when characters’ achievements go unrecognised by those around them is entirely proportional to the degree to which I love watching those around them realise or see those achievements. It is possible I am projecting just a little bit here, but I hate it when this happens—when a character does something astonishing but no one who is with them sees or knows or realises, and so they all assume that character is less than they truly are.

I destroyed them, she thought with a smile, thoughts slipping away from her. I was a burning warrior, a hero called by the Horn. They won’t dare face me again.

This contrast here, between his complete lack of even the slightest thought that maybe she was involved—he doesn’t even consider it, just as usual goes straight for the option that accords her the least agency or competence possible, because what more would someone want in a boyfriend—and her unspoken response. The knowledge that the Seanchan sure as hell discovered her, and it was to their grief that they did.

His denial of her competence and her own certainty of it, her own quiet triumph that goes unrecognised by her own strongest allies.

But not by those in the Tower; Saerin realised who she was, and the novices she was with know, and Adelorna was with her. They know what she has done. And Egwene herself knows, and holds to that knowledge.

I like that she gets to have that line, too. That she gets to take pride in what she has done, even if parts of it were terrible, even if she is so tired she can barely think, even if the Tower is broken despite all her efforts. I like that she gets to have that kind of confidence and that she doesn’t have to belittle her accomplishments. Because she was fucking awesome, and she should get to say so.

Called by the Horn is an interesting thought for her to have, by the way.

She distantly heard Siuan’s voice. “What’s this? Light, Egwene! Where did you get this? This is the most powerful one in the Tower!”

“What is it, Siuan?” Bryne’s voice asked.

“Our way out,” Siuan said distantly.

It’s also really the last puzzle piece you should need, to work out what exactly Egwene’s role in all of this was. Seriously, Siuan, if you and all your political and pattern-finding skill can’t put it together, I’m disappointed. Hm, I wonder what Egwene—who has been given forkroot and so can’t channel strongly—would be doing with the most powerful sa’angreal in the Tower, wearing a white dress and on the same floor of the Tower where Gawyn pointed out a woman throwing fire at the Seanchan. Probably just left ‘defenceless in the hallway’ to have a nap. Yep, sounds about right.

No! Egwene thought, clawing through her drowsiness, forcing her eyes open. I’m winning, don’t you see?

But they don’t see. Because for all that these three are the ones who should believe in you the most strongly—and two of them have shown themselves to be exactly that in the past, by helping you become Amyrlin in truth and acknowledging you as such, and by giving you the army and accepting your true authority—they apparently still see a defenceless prisoner in need of rescue.

It’s especially weird coming from Siuan—enough so that it almost seems out of character—because that’s really not so different from how Egwene appeared, to most, when she was with the rebels. At least until the declaration of war, she gave every outward impression of being the puppet child Amyrlin they wanted, naïve and powerless against the Hall and set up to take the fall if it all went wrong. And Siuan knew how much truth there was to that illusion.

Sigh.

Well, as soon as she wakes up I look forward to her giving them an earful.

And breaking up with Gawyn.

A GIRL CAN DREAM, OKAY?

I must say, though, that this chapter has made excellent use of outsider POV, across its whole range. We’ve had those moments of realisation from those who have seen Egwene, and even from Gawyn and Bryne who didn’t recognise her but were still awed by her, and last chapter from Adelorna who almost immediately understood and accepted her authority. And then we’ve had, too, the misperception of her as helpless, by those who found her after the battle had already been won when she’s too tired to do anything more. It’s a great way of showing the effect perception can have, and it also lends it this…kind of bittersweet sense of extraordinary accomplishment and the awe from characters like Saerin, but also the complete ignorance of characters like Gawyn, who don’t even know what an incredible thing she’s done.

It’s very well done, and such an interesting way to play it, even in the times when it’s INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING.

All in all, a truly excellent battle. I sort of wondered whether, under Sanderson, the battles would continue in the standard of excellence but each in their own entirely unique way, because it’s something I’ve really, really loved about the series so far. And in this book, at least, that standard has continued.

Anyway, back to Saerin, who is also very tired.

There were a frightful number of dead, including over twenty Aes Sedai so far.

Yeah, I think this might have been what Min’s vision was about, back in TSR. I assumed it was the coup, when that happened, but I don’t think the death toll was nearly so high then. That’s impressive manipulation of foreshadowing and deception, if so.

And also, once again we’re seeing the cost of the victory. They’ve won, but not without a high price.

Saerin has definitely taken command of the administrative side of this battle and its aftermath, and seems to be doing a good job of it. I like it when relatively minor characters get a chance to shine this way.

It also feels like the beginning of…exactly what Tower needs, which is others stepping up to help—well, not just to help Egwene, but to help the Tower itself. To help her help the Tower. She cannot do it all herself, but now there are those who are finally following the example she has tried to set, and the unity she has tried so hard to foster. It’s the beginning of the Tower saving itself.

Where under the Light was Elaida?

Yeah, good question.

Also, where has Alviarin been in all of this? We saw Katerine, but Alviarin’s been conspicuously absent. Where was Mesaana?

Nobody had seen anything of the Amyrlin during the battle

On the contrary, Saerin. Many saw her. The Seanchan certainly did, by the light of the fireballs she was throwing in their faces.

Only three novices in Egwene’s group of over sixty had died? And only one sister out of some forty she had gathered? Ten Seanchan channellers captured, over thirty raken blown from the air? Light! That made Saerin’s own efforts seem downright amateur by comparison. And this was the woman Elaida kept trying to insist was simply a novice?

Salvation and destruction, all in one neat report.

Can you forward that report on to Gawyn and Bryne and Siuan, Saerin?

Oh shit is Elaida dead?

“The entire wall burst in, Saerin Sedai.”

Yeah, walls and rooftops are dangerous enemies in this series.

Oh. Okay. No, Elaida is not dead.

She’s on a raken with an a’dam around her neck.

That’s…uh…

Huh.

I’m not completely sure how I feel about that, actually.

On the one hand, there’s a certain sense of balance to both claimants to the Amyrlin Seat being taken against their will from the Tower at the end of the battle, with none realising until afterwards. In that sense, maybe it’s a way of handing the fate of the Tower to the Hall—Elaida has done her damage and Egwene has done what she can to heal it and now the Tower stands shaken and poised to tip one way or the other and it is up to the Aes Sedai themselves to decide whether the Tower will be saved or destroyed.

On the other hand…what a weird way for Elaida to exit that storyline, after so much has been built up there.

I’ll wait and reserve judgement on this until I see what comes of it, but that’s…an interesting development, for sure.

Also I really, really want to be a fly on the wall when Egwene wakes up.

Next (TGS ch 42) Previous (TGS ch 40)

#this chapter was definitely worth waiting for #Wheel of Time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

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ma9l · 5 years ago

Text

Annotated Bibliography: Instagram and Depression Sources

Frison, Eline, and Steven Eggermont. “Browsing, Posting, and Liking on Instagram: The Reciprocal Relationships Between Different Types of Instagram Use and Adolescents’ Depressed Mood.” CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, vol. 20, no. 10, Oct. 2017, pp. 603–609. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1089/cyber.2017.0156.

The authors in this article took the approach of doing a longitudinal study on 671 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19. They decided to do this because they noticed that a cross-sectional longitudinal test had not yet been performed between mental health and Instagram use. The results confirmed that the more browsing one does on Instagram, the more depressed their mood is. On the flip side, they also found that the more depressed one is, the more likely they are to post on Instagram when they are depressed. It addressed both sides. Either Instagram can affect your mood, or your mood can affect how you behave on Instagram. This article was published in 2017 and the authors both have a PhD in this field of study which increases their credibility. Charts of data were provided to demonstrate how they measured and collected their results. The charts display information regarding the different times the participants were interacting in different ways on Instagram (posting, liking, or browsing) and jotted those activities down. In order to measure, they used a scaling system of numbers 1-7 where participants would rank how often they did one of the 3 activities with 1 being never and 7 being several times a day. Another chart shows the relationships between those activities with a depressed mood so we can see how they correlate. Something these authors took into account was they considered whether gender had anything to do with the likeliness of someone being depressed after spending time on Instagram, but the results for each sex were similar. To my understanding, there are multiple ways one can browse on Instagram whether it be by scrolling through your feed, viewing stories, watching Instagram TV/other videos, and visiting accounts of those you follow. Because there is such a variety in what you can do on the app, there must be a variety of emotions that users experience as they bounce from one activity to another. The article stated that browsing had the largest impact, but I am still curious as to how the others compare.

Hunt, Melissa G., et al. “No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression.” Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, vol. 37, no. 10, Dec. 2018, pp. 751–768. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751.

This article can be found in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. Here, four authors work together on an experimental study to discover if social media plays a role in causing “worse well-being.” Rather than experimenting with only one platform, participants (from the University of Pennsylvania) were asked to limit the use of three: Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat to ten minutes a day or they were assigned to just use them as they normally would for three consecutive weeks. This created a control group and a test group. Interestingly enough, after the three weeks were up, both groups resulted in being less anxious and having less FOMO (fear of missing out). The authors credit this to more persistent self-monitoring. However, the group who limited themselves proved to be less depressed and lonely than the controlled group who didn’t make any changes. The study is only about a year old having been performed in 2018, a lot of facts and numbers were included thanks to the authors’ research, a clear outline of the process, and a defined prospective timeline of events. The procedure involved a voluntary sign up, surveys scaling different categories, participants sending screenshots of their battery level at specific times which is affected by the amount of time they spend on certain applications, etc. It is very thorough and well thought out. Limitations and the possibility of manipulation were considered as well. This study focused on social media in general, yet each form of social media has unique characteristics that could potentially alter or skew results based on which specific applications were used at a particular time and for how long the user spent on a single platform. For example, Facebook has a lot more to see than Instagram does when it comes to scrolling. Facebook is endless, whereas Instagram displays a kind reminder saying “you are all caught up” once you get to where you left off. I feel like one could be tempted to waste more time on Facebook than Instagram and therefore be exposed to more negative factors and consume information that would affect them mentally. Then again, maybe it all comes down to the content provided. Either way, based on the findings of this study, the authors recommend limiting your social media use to 30 minutes a day to improve your well-being.

Hwnag, Ha Sung. "Why Social Comparison on Instagram Matters: Its impact on Depression." KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems, vol. 13, no. 3, 2019, p. 1626+. Gale OneFile: Computer Science, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.uvu.edu/apps/doc/A586241540/CDB?u=utahvalley&sid=CDB&xid=c957fbb6. Accessed 26 Oct. 2019.

The study was officially published in March of this year (2019) by Hu Sung Hwang at KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems. Out of all of the articles, this one was the most applicable to me because the study focused on college students. 245 college students who used Instagram were surveyed on questions related to Instagram activities and their relation to social comparison. The article claims that there are three types of comparison: upward, downward, and horizontal that each contribute to our psychological well-being either positively or negatively and considers whether or not they contribute to depression. I wish she would have gone into more depth on what defines the three types of comparison because I didn’t quite understand that concept and how it tied back to the topic. Unlike the other sources a lot of background information on the topic was provided here which gives us a better idea of how educated the author is on the subject matter. It also makes up for the lack of charts or photographs as proof of experimentation having taken place. Another thing the author made sure to do was she broke it down and looked at individual aspects of the title of the piece, meaning she separately discussed instagram, social media, and depression and then combined them to understand how they are connected. This journal excerpt was long and well-developed. The areas measured include: Instagram use, activity, social comparison, depression, and demographics. The final results produced are as follows: “Taken together, these findings indicate that the daily amount of time spent using Instagram and the frequency of Instagram use influence all types of social comparison. In addition, they also suggest that users who spend more time looking at other people's status updates or commenting on other people's photos are more likely to experience upward social comparison than other types of comparison.”

Lup, Katerina, et al. “Instagram #instasad?: Exploring Associations among Instagram Use, Depressive Symptoms, Negative Social Comparison, and Strangers Followed.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior And Social Networking, vol. 18, no. 5, May 2015, pp. 247–252. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1089/cyber.2014.0560.

Similar to the NBC article below, this study focused on Instagram as an outlet rather than an inlet. In a sense, this means the authors were considering how people use the platform to express themselves, particularly when they are sad. The authors predicted that the negative connotation of Instagram has risen due to social comparison and the number of strangers followed. The second contribution (strangers followed) hadn’t been addressed by any of the other articles yet, so that was a clever insight. They were able to reach the wide array of 18-29 year olds by hosting an online questionnaire for 117 individuals. By doing this, they were able to analyze both how frequently the participants used the app as well as the number of strangers they followed. To insure that the test was reliable, two different types of scales were incorporated: the Center for Epidemiological Resources Scale for Depression and the Social Comparison Rating Scale. This helped them measure and recognize patterns and relations: “Findings generally suggest that more frequent Instagram use has negative associations for people who follow more strangers, but positive associations for people who follow fewer strangers, with social comparison and depressive symptoms.” A question I have is what about having strangers as followers? A lot of accounts are public on purpose because they want strangers to follow them. Does that influence what people post? I wouldn’t be surprised if it did because these kinds of people are usually concerned about the numbers and getting people to follow them, which only happens when they post certain things. I would even go as far as saying they become fake. They post what their followers want to see as opposed to what they sincerely want to share. Why? They don’t even know these people? I would be curious to learn more on this matter. Anyway, in the title of this article, the hashtag #instasad is mentioned. I had a hard time deciding if that was a real hashtag that the study was based on or if it was created by the authors because it made sense with the topic. Either way, you can surely find the tag on Instagram and a decent selection of depressive posts linked to it. Because this study was performed in 2015, it is more out of date than the other sources I looked into, but it is important to view earlier stages of research to see how it’s grown and developed over the years. Having been released 4 years ago, it’s interesting to note that the same problems we experience today existed back then.

Mackson, Samantha B., et al. “Instagram: Friend or Foe? The Application’s Association with Psychological Well-Being.” New Media & Society, vol. 21, no. 10, Oct. 2019, pp. 2160–2182. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/1461444819840021.

An obvious curiosity that was explored within the article: “Instagram: Friend or Foe?”, was that of the difference between those who use Instagram and those who don’t. The question in the title itself imposes that we ask ourselves how we personally view the platform. I don’t think most people would strictly say one or the other, I believe there is hesitation because so many of us have a love-hate relationship with Instagram, making it both a friend and a foe, just at different times. Now, depending on who is asked, people might wonder whether or not the impact the app has on it’s users is really all that significant compared to people who avoid it entirely. Is it worth avoiding? Or does it hardly do any damage? I feel like Instagram should be balanced between friend and foe, landing in the middle somewhere as more of an acquaintance than anything else. This way, it’s up to you to decide on the kind of relationship you want to have with it. If you want to get to know it better, you’ll spend more time with it, whereas if you have negative feelings toward it, you may want to distance yourself at times and take frequent breaks. Isn’t that how relationships with humans are defined? Along with this, some of the most common mental illnesses these days are depression and anxiety. They almost go hand-in-hand. This article addresses both as their negative connection with Instagram is brought into question. Results confirmed that those with the application ranked higher in experiencing symptoms of the illnesses than those without it. The reason they refer to the platform as a “friend or foe” is because it can be used for both good and bad. Yes, this article is up to date-very much so, in fact. It was put out on the 10th day of this exact month and year. In depth research on depression and anxiety were outlined near the beginning of the issue. This was smart and necessary because it provides readers with the opportunity to be more informed on the illnesses before drawing conclusions about it. In short, this article was a success because it clearly proved that “Instagram is associated with psychological well-being.”

Macmillan, Amanda. “Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health.” TIME, 25 May, 2017, https://time.com/4793331/instagram-social-media-mental-health/. Accessed 21 Oct. 2019.

This TIME article is slightly outdated because it was written in 2017, but that doesn’t mean the information within it is false; In fact, Instagram has been around for almost 10 years so it is actually more recent than it is old. I stated in my project proposal that through my research I wanted to see how Instagram compared to other social media platforms and this article addresses exactly that. “Out of five social networks included in the survey, YouTube received the highest marks for health and wellbeing and was the only site that received a net positive score by respondents. Twitter came in second, followed by Facebook and then Snapchat—with Instagram bringing up the rear.” This supports my topic and tells us that Instagram is the least beneficial for our well being, which reinforces the significance of researching this specific issue. The author was helpful as she compared the pros and cons (positive/negative effects) of social media rather than just focusing on one or the other. Not only does this article give us the facts, but it also suggests ways to change. Some of those ideas include: a “heavy usage” warning, a highlight for photos that have been edited or changed from their original state, and finally teaching it to students as part of their health education in school. I agree with these ideas and I’m excited to see the difference they will make after being implemented. I’m especially passionate about having it be taught in schools because children are the rising generation and humanity depends on them for creating a bright future. Not only that, but they are also the most common users of these platforms ranging from elementary to college aged students, thus are the ones most needing to be educated in safe usage. As we can see, action is fortunately already being taken, but the issue can’t be fixed overnight. I appreciate how it concluded by saying “We must be ready to nurture the innovation that the future holds.” Technology is a part of our day and it isn’t going away so we need to find ways to embrace it.

Miller, Caroline. “Does Social Media Cause Depression?” Child Mind Institute, https://childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2019.

This article was written by a member of Child Mind Institute, a non-profit organization. Her name is Caroline Miller. The organization is dedicated to helping children and families with mental health issues and disorders. Although there is not an exact date listed, the website is current and still running because the copyright year is 2019. Outside educational sources have been linked throughout the write-up with raw facts and data to inform readers about the studies that have already been done as a reminder that people are actively engaged in resolving the conflicts with social media. Since the website revolves around mental health, some of the links take you to related subjects written by other members of the Child Mind Institute team that can deepen your understanding and widen your view of mental health. Miller has the perspective that Instagram doesn’t directly cause depression, but that the time spent on Instagram only correlates with the rise in depression. Several negative associations with social media besides depression, but those which still fall in the same realm, are listed in consecutive headings. For example, sleep deprivation, isolation, or less healthy activity are a few Miller dives into. A clinical psychologist for CSI says: “The less you are connected with human beings in a deep, empathic way, the less you’re really getting the benefits of a social interaction… The more superficial it is, the less likely it’s going to cause you to feel connected, which is something we all need.” I couldn’t agree more. Often, it’s easier to replace our social health with social media rather than going out with friends or attending events, but social media needn’t be a replacement. Instead, it should only be considered an additional way to connect with others. It’s a great tool to keep in touch with people-especially for those who live far away, but it isn’t a genuine way to develop and strengthen relationships. Thanks to the article, 6 tips for healthier social media use are layed out near the conclusion of the piece This shines a spotlight on us as it invites us to reflect on how we can improve our health as it relates to online activities. This is similar to the article by Pawlowski who also gives helpful advice on the matter.

Parnell, Bailey. “Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health?” YouTube, uploaded by TEDxTalks, 22 Jun. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg_9C7gw0o.

Unlike the other sources I found, this one is in video format as a 2017 TED Talk. Bailey Parnell is the speaker. She’s an award winning digital marketer, public speaker, etc. In her talk, she, herself, started out by demonstrating a monologue of someone scrolling through Instagram and reacting to its content. It was funny, lighthearted, and relatable which is a fantastic way to introduce your subject and get your audience engaged. Parnell had previous data and statistics to show up on her PowerPoint slides, but she also did some primary research on the spot by surveying her listeners. She asked them questions and had them raise their hands. She was able to involve her audience, and see if her previous research aligned with the experiment she did in the moment. One example of this was when she asked if anyone noticed the notification alert in the upper corner of her slides. Several people had and admitted that it was driving them crazy. I am the same way because I am always checking my notifications to get them to disappear. It’s like a checklist where you have to mark the task off to say it’s been acknowledged and completed. Is this a demonstration of addiction or obsession? Something to think about.. Bailey used pathos through her tone of voice, but mainly towards the end of her speech as she had slides of kids who had committed suicide because of the bad experiences they had online. It got so bad for them that they gave up because they couldn’t handle it anymore. If that doesn’t encourage you to reevaluate your online interactions with others, I don’t know what does. The stance she took on the issue was that social media isn’t the issue, it’s the people who use it. We don’t have to be negatively impacted by it, but we allow ourselves to be by the way we engage with it. Like several other articles, tips were given on how to be safer online and Parnell also says not to get rid of it because it's not going anywhere, but to, instead, find ways to practice “safe social”.

Pawlowski, A. “Can Your Instagram Photos Reveal That You're Depressed?” NBC, https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/can-your-instagram-photos-reveal-you-re-depressed-ncna794041. Accessed 22 Oct. 2019.

This news piece has a unique take on the depression/Instagram correlation concern. Instead of seeing the platform as an inlet where one is obtaining a bunch of information that can contribute to their mental state, it views it from the opposite side of the spectrum in saying Instagram can also be used as an outlet for your emotions and reveal whether someone is depressed to their followers based on certain characteristics like the color scheme they use in their photographs. The colors blue, white, gray, or black seem to be more commonly associated with depressed individuals due to their dull, melancholy appearance, but not always. It’s important not to assume that everyone who uses that color scheme is depressed, but is still a trend amongst persons with depression. The article is rhetorical and uses a great deal of pathos in its tone as it appeals to emotion. It does this by giving a real life example of a woman who filled her account with pictures that portrayed how she was feeling which was, in fact, depressed. It also discusses how a computer program was designed to review these photos and identify whether someone was depressed. It is still in the works, but could be useful in the future for assisting those who aren’t receiving proper help with their condition. I was curious before starting my research on this issue about how involved parents are with their children’s social media use and under a heading titled “If you’re a parent worried about your child’s Instagram images…” it advises them to check in with their kids in a constructive way. If I were a parent, I would be following my kids on all the platforms and addressing them in person if I noticed anything concerning because they probably aren’t going to approach me voluntarily. I think it’s safe to say that most parents want to have a strong and trustworthy relationship with their children so they feel safe enough to talk to them when they aren’t feeling like themselves, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case. That is where social media becomes a tool for parents. The article concludes with a paragraph on self-reflection and self-analyzation which encourages you, if you’re feeling down or different, to look at your own photos to see if any of them confirm depressiveness. This applies to everyone whether you’re the one who is depressed or someone you know. It can either persuade you to reach out for assistance, or allow you to be a helping hand for someone else.

Wong, Brittany. “An Instagram With No 'Likes' Could Have A Big Impact On Mental Health.” HUFFPOST, 10 May 2019 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/instagram-hiding-likes-mental-health_l_5cd092d3e4b0548b735e50bc?guccounter=1. Accessed 21 Oct. 2019.

This article from HUFFPOST has an interesting layout. Aside from other sources, Wong uses the visual spectacle to her advantage by including a video introduction and a screenshot of an Instagram post to break up the written article itself. Perhaps the most important thing about this source, and the reason it is so reliable, is the fact that Adam Mosseri, who is the head of Instagram, was directly engaged-and he should be! Who is more credible to speak about this topic than the head of Instagram himself? He performs a presentation in the video where he suggests three ways to make the Instagram app safer for its users and to actually combat cyberbullying which can most certainly contribute to depression. If the head of instagram recognizes that something is up, then something is definitely up. Granted, money could very well be his motivation for making these changes, I still think he is wise in making these suggestions. In Canada, a separate test was being experimented with based on the question: ”Could a like-free Instagram make us a lot less thirsty for approval and more mentally sound?” In simpler terms, the number of likes would be removed from a person’s post so that the viewers focused more on the content of the picture rather than the engagement with it. This differed from Mosseri’s suggestions, but was still a clever idea and worth reading into. Negative and positive effects of social media are mentioned throughout the article, links to related sources are cited, and it was written in May of this year so it is very recent, which makes the data more relevant to the present. The author of this source even includes examples of a man and woman (Sarah and Cam) who personally participated in the experiment with a “like-free Instagram” in order to see how they benefited. They both reported that they prefer not being able to see the likes on photos. Count me in! I want to know what that kind of experience is like. Imagine how much your thought processing would change!

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