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luckgods · 3 years

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Why all the white guys in whump?

I got Inspired by a post asking that question, and here we are. Warning: long post ahead.

I think it’s due to a combination of factors, as things frequently are.

The preference for / prevalence of white male characters in fandom is well-known and has been examined pretty thoroughly by people already.

What’s worth noting for discussing this tendency in whump in particular is that the ‘whump fandom’ itself is not a ‘fandom’ in the traditional sense of being made of fans of one single source narrative (or source setting, like a particular comics fandom, or the Star Wars extended universe) with pre-existing characters. Although subsets of traditional fandoms certainly exist within the larger whump fandom, a lot of whump is based on original, ‘fan’-created characters.

So, given the tendency of ‘traditional’ fandoms to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters due to the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc), if we say hypothetically that the whump fandom is split say 50/50 between ‘traditional’ fandom works and original whump works, you’d expect to see a higher number of works focused on white men than the demographics of the ‘traditional’ fandom’s source work would predict, but not as extreme of a divergence between the source material & the fanworks as the one you’d see if whump fandom were 100% based on popular media.

However, that doesn’t quite seem to be the case. Whump stories and art remain focused on overwhelmingly male and frequently white characters, which means that the tendency of the fandom to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters cannot be ONLY explained by the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc).

And, having established the fact that whump writers & artists presumably have MORE control over the design of their characters than writers & artists in ‘traditional’ fandoms, we have to wonder why the proportions remain biased towards men, & white men in particular.

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The race thing is pretty simple in my opinion. Mostly, it’s just another extension of the fanbase’s tendency to reflect the (predominantly US-American, on tumblr) culture it exists in, which means that, in a white-centric culture, people make artworks featuring white people.

There’s also the issue of artists being hesitant to write works that dwell heavily on violence towards people of color due to the (US-American) history of people of color being violently mistreated. I’ve actually seen a couple of posts arguing that white people SHOULDN’T write whump of nonwhite characters (particularly Black characters) because of the history of actual violence against Black bodies being used as entertainment, which means that fictional violence against Black people, written by white people, for a (presumed) white audience, still feels exploitative and demeaning.

I'm not going to get into all my thoughts on this discussion here but suffice to say that there's probably an impact on the demographics of whump works from authors of color who simply... don't want to see violence against people of color, even non-explicitly-racialized violence, and then another impact from white authors who choose not to write non-white characters either due to the reasons stated above, or simply due to their personal discomfort with how to go about writing non-white characters in a genre that is heavily focused on interpersonal violence.

Interestingly enough, there’s also a decent proportion of Japanese manga & anime being used as source material for whump, and manga-styled original works being created. The particular relationship between US-American and Japanese pop culture could take up a whole essay just by itself so I’ll just say, there’s a long history of US-Japanese cultural exchange which means that this tendency is also not all that surprising.

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GENDER though. If someone had the time and the energy they could make a fucking CAREER out of examining gender in whump, gender dynamics in whump, and why there seems to be a fandom-wide preference for male whumpees that cannot be fully explained by the emphasis on male characters in the source text.

I have several different theories about factors which impact gender preference in whump, and anyone who has other theories (or disagrees with mine) is free to jump in and add on.

THEORY 1: AUTHOR GENDER AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.  Fandom in general is predominantly female, although these days it might be more accurate to say that fandom is predominantly composed of cis women and trans people of all genders. However, pretty much everyone who isn't a cis man has had to contend with the specter of gendered violence in their real personal life. Thus, if we posit whump (and fandom more generally) as a sort of escapist setup, it's not hard to see why whump authors & artists might willfully eschew writing female whumpees (especially in the case of inflicted whump), because (as in the discussion of people of color in whump above), even violence towards women that is explicitly non-gender-based may still hit too close to home for people whose lives have been saturated with the awareness of gender-based violence.

THEORY 2: SICK OF SEXY SUFFERING.  Something of an addendum to theory 1, it's worth noting that depictions of female suffering in popular media are extremely gendered (in that they specifically reflect real-life gender-based violence, and that said real-life violence is almost exclusively referenced in relation to female characters) and frequently sexualized as well. There's only so many times you can see female characters having their clothes Strategically Ripped while they're held captive, being sexually menaced (overtly or implicitly) to demonstrate How Evil the villain is, or just getting outright sexually assaulted for the Drama of it all before it gets exhausting, especially when the narratives typically either brush any consequences under the rug, or dwell on them in a way that feels more voyeuristic and gratuitous than realistic and meaningful. All this may result in authors who, given the chance to write their own depictions of suffering, may decide simply to remove the possibility of gendered violence by removing the female gender.

THEORY 3: AUTHOR ATTRACTION.  I'll admit that this one is more a matter of conjecture, as I haven't seen any good demographic breakdowns of attraction in general fandom or whump fandom. That said, my own experience talking to fellow whump fans does indicate that attraction to the characters (whether whumpers, or whumpees) is part of the draw of whump for some people. This one partially ties into theory 1 as well, in that people who are attracted to multiple genders may not derive the same enjoyment out of seeing a female character in a whumpy situation as they might seeing a male character in that situation, simply because of the experience of gendered violence in their lives.

THEORY 4: ACCEPTABLE TARGETS.  The female history of fandom means that there's been a lot more discussion of the impacts of depicting pain & suffering (especially female suffering) for personal amusement. Thus, in some ways, you could say that there is a mild taboo on putting female characters through suffering if you can't "justify" it as meaningful to the narrative, not just titillating, which whump fandom rarely tries or requires anyone to do. This fan-cultural 'rule' may impact whump writers' and artists' decisions in choosing the gender of their characters.

THEORY 5: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MAINSTREAM MASCULINITY.  Whump fandom may like whumping men because by and large, mainstream/pop culture doesn't let men be vulnerable, doesn't let them cry, doesn't let them have long-term health issues due to constantly getting beat up even when they really SHOULD, doesn't let them have mental health issues period. Female characters, as discussed in theory 2, get to ("get to") go through suffering and be affected by it (however poorly written those effects are), but typically, male characters' suffering is treated as a temporary problem, minimized, and sublimated into anger if at all possible. (For an example, see: every scene in a movie where something terrible happens and the male lead character screams instead of crying). So, as nature abhors a vacuum, whump fandom "over-produces" whump of men so as to fill in that gap in content.

THEORY 6: AMPLIFIED BIAS.  While it's true that whump fandom doesn't have a source text, it's also true that whump fans frequently find their way into the fandom via other 'traditional' fandoms, and continue participating in 'traditional' fandoms as part of their whump fandom activity. Bias begets bias; fandom as a whole has a massive problem with focusing on white male characters, and fans who are used to the bias towards certain types of characters in derivative works absolutely reproduce that bias in their own original whump works.

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I honestly think that there is greater bias in the whump fandom than anyone would like to admit. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems as though whump fans avoid introspection and discussion of the issue by bringing up the points I talked about in my previous theories, particularly discomfort with depictions of female suffering for amusement.

However, I think that, as artists, we owe it to ourselves and one another to engage in at least a small amount of self-interrogation over our preferences, and see what unconscious or unacknowledged biases we possess. It's a little absurd to argue that depictions of women as whumpees are universally too distressing to even discuss when a male character in the exact same position would be fine and even gratifying to the person making that argument; while obviously, people have a right to their own boundaries, those boundaries should not be used to shut down discussion of any topics, even sensitive ones.

Furthermore, engaging in personal reflection allows artists to make more deliberate (and meaningful) art. For people whose goal is simply to have fun, that may not seem all that appealing, but having greater understanding of one's own preferences can be very helpful towards deciding what works to create, what to focus on when creating, and what works to seek out.

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GENDER ADDENDUM: NONBINARY CHARACTERS, NONBINARY AUTHORS.  Of course, this whole discussion so far has been exclusively based on a male-female binary, which is reductive. (I will note, though, that many binary people do effectively sort all nonbinary people they know of into 'female-aligned' and 'male-aligned' categories and then proceed to treat the nonbinary people and characters they have categorized a 'female-aligned' the same way as they treat people & characters who are actually female, and ditto for 'male-aligned'. That tendency is very frustrating for me, as a nonbinary person whose gender has NOTHING to do with any part of the binary, and reveals that even 'progressive' fandom culture has quite a ways to go in its understanding of gender.)

Anyways, nonbinary characters in whump are still VERY rare and typically written by nonbinary authors. (I have no clue whether nonbinary whump fans have, as a demographic group, different gender preferences than binary fans, but I'd be interested in seeing that data.)

As noted above with female characters, it's similarly difficult to have a discussion about representation and treatment of nonbinary characters in whump fandom, and frankly in fandom in general. Frequently, people regard attempts to open discussions on difficult topics as a call for conflict. This defensive stance once again reveals the distaste for requests of meaningful self-examination that is so frequent in fandom spaces, and online more generally.

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TL;DR: Whump is not immune to the same gender & racial biases that are prevalent in fandom and (US-American) culture. If you enjoy whump: ask yourself why you dislike the things you dislike— the answer may surprise you. If you create whump: ask yourself whose stories you tell, and what stories you refuse to tell— then ask yourself why.

#eposting #whumpinions #whump #whumpblr #whump community #essay #i wrote this so yall all have to read it lol #but seriously the next person who implies that a nonbinary person is just 'woman-lite' or 'man-lite' is going to Die By My Fucking Sword #mine

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lilydalexf · 3 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Audrey Roget

Audrey Roget has 10 fics at Gossamer, with some different ones at AO3, fanfiction.net, and her website. You might know her from her very good fics or as part of Musea, a collective that all wrote fic and posted X-Files fic recs. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas and The Shirt. Big thanks to Audrey for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)? A little, yes. Not so much by folks who were around in those days. I sometimes go hunting for beloved stories from the early years, both those I read and loved, and those I never got around to. I am always delighted to hear that later generations of fans have stumbled across my stuff, especially since I haven’t posted anything new in a number of years. It’s fantastic that both years-long fans and new ones are out there continuing to rec fic from all eras, and to maintain archives for fans yet-to-be born. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general? It may sound corny, but the main thing I think of, and the thing that has ultimately been most valuable and lasting, has been the friendships. The feeling of having found a tribe – not just of TXF fans, but of other people who could be as enthusiastically engaged as I was (if not more so) with fictional stories and characters – was mind-blowing. Since I was a kid, I had often mulled over the books/movies/TV I loved and speculated internally about what happened off the page or off-screen, or created new stories for characters in my head. But, except for an elementary school phase where I and my two BFFs regularly played Charlie’s Angels, I hadn’t engaged in that kind of gleeful immersion in a fictional world with others until TXF fandom. My involvement in fandom followed pretty quickly from getting hooked on the show, so for me, it’s all one big ball of experiences. Even as my interest in/involvement in fandom has waxed and waned over the years, I’ve been lucky to remain friends with wonderful people who I originally connected with as fellow fans.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)? What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

My initial entrée to the fandom was through fanfiction. I didn’t get interested in the show until mid-season 5. Around the same time, I read an article in a zine called Might (co-founded by Dave Eggers) about this thing called fanfiction that people would write and publish online. At first I thought it was satire or a joke – the fic cited involved Wilma Flintstone and a polished sabre tooth, as I recall – but then realized this was an actual thing. So I figured that a show then at the peak of pop culture must have fanfiction, and I went looking. Early on, I scrolled atxc on a daily basis and downloaded stories. But I didn’t engage in discussions about the show on Usenet, since I only knew how to access it with my Earthlink email client, and I didn’t want to post using my real name.

Later, I set up a pseud address with Yahoo and subscribed to a couple of email fanfic/discussion lists, and stayed subscribed to those for years. There was also a period in there somewhere – of maybe only a year or so, when I think about it – when I’d often nerd out into the wee hours with other fans via IM chat groups. That was around the time the small writers’ collective Musea was founded, and we were active for several years after the show’s initial run. In the early aughts, I followed many authors to LiveJournal and eventually set up my own account and stayed involved in fandom that way, until it mostly dispersed as well. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? In a word: Chemistry. I had casually watched a couple of episodes during the first four seasons, but I’m not a huge sci-fi/horror fan at heart, and the story lines didn’t immediately grab me. But I happened to tune into The Red and the Black in 1998, and BOOM. For the first time, the intense layers of emotion and attraction between Mulder and Scully really struck me – and then of course, upon further viewing, I realized it was unmissable, an essential element in the fabric of the show. As a wise woman once said, a switch had been flicked. Mulder and Scully’s magnetism was like nothing I’d ever seen, and though I eventually came to appreciate the storytelling, humor, production values, and other components that made the series so successful, watching those characters interact has always been what kept me coming back. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files? I was part of a list-serv discussion group for The West Wing for a while, which was a fun melding of character and plot analysis with political discussion. Later, I got into the House, MD fandom, again mostly as a fanfic reader/writer. I was finding that other fandoms, unlike TXF, were more dispersed, the networks of people structured more loosely, if at all. There were fanfic and discussion communities on LiveJournal, and fanfiction.net was the other main hub for posting and reading, but if there was anything centralized like Gossamer, Ephemeral, or the Haven, I never found it. Within all those fan communities, as in TXF, there were partisans for various characters and pairings, and flame wars erupted over plot developments that outraged this faction or that. One main difference was that those other shows had larger, ensemble casts and more varied subplots. So on one hand, there was more opportunity to explore back stories and multiple perspectives. In House MD in particular, there were several entrenched rival shipper camps, which were about equally grounded in canon, rather than TXF’s central ship. I was less into TWW fic, but my impression was that readers were less militant about their pairing preferences than TXF or House fans. Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I was deeply fascinated by Greg House for several years. (And the love-hate chemistry between him and Lisa Cuddy was a strong draw for me.) House MD came early in a wave of TV shows centered on anti-heroes, and Hugh Laurie brought amazing complexity and thoughtfulness to the character.

Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans) are a lethal pair of antiheroes. The inherent moral conflict of a sympathetic narrative from their POVs, and the global political conflict they embody was TV catnip for me. The internal struggles at the hearts of those characters were so exquisitely written and performed, they completely fascinate me.

The West Wing felt so much like a show created specifically for me. I’m especially fond of story arcs and scenes that centered on CJ Cregg, Charlie Young, and Josh Lyman. Though I loved Martin Sheen’s human portrayal of Jed Bartlet, the fact that he was the President always made him a little untouchable in my mind. But CJ, Charlie, and Josh were basically hard-working functionaries who were ambitious and idealistic and funny and flawed, and they spoke to me. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I do continue to think about Mulder and Scully and watch episodes somewhat often. I’ll sometimes run a favorite episode as background when I want something comforting on. I read TXF fic pretty regularly, which can inspire me to go back and watch a particular episode or story arc I haven’t thought about in years. Just recently, I started listening to The X-Files Diaries podcast (@XFDPodcast, @admiralty-xfd), and that’s a fun dive into the characters, and how other fans react to and interpret episodes.

Every once in a while, a TV show or movie – and more particularly, the characters – will grab my attention and make me curious about how fanfic writers have interpreted the original material. Random example, I saw Singin’ in the Rain for the first time in a theatre a couple of years ago, and the chemistry of the three leads sent me to AO3 as soon as I got home. I also loved the first season of Mercy Street and found some well-done stories in that fandom. I usually peruse the Yuletide gifts every year and have been amazed by the sheer variety, creativity and cheekiness of the output. There are a bunch of other shows I’ve followed faithfully, and sought out fanfic – Broadchurch, The Killing, Agents of SHIELD, Elementary, The Good Wife. Although I’ve found some well-written stuff in those fandoms, I’ve rarely gotten the same charge from them as reading TXF fic. Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

syntax6 (@syntax6) – Universal Invariants/Laws of Motion. I’d also shout out to syn’s Hunter fics, too – well worth reading even for those who have never seen or particularly loved the show itself.

JET – I re-read Small Lives Awake every year around Thanksgiving time. Other annual holiday re-reads: Revely’s The Dreaming Sea and Jordan’s Through the Fire (both set at Halloween).

Amal Nahurriyeh’s Casey universe – the rare post-col fic that felt hopeful, made extra intriguing by a kick-ass original character. [Lilydale note: the series starts with Machines of Freedom and has lots of additional fics and snippets.]

Prufrock’s Love – Finding Rokovoko was genuinely terrifying and tender.

melforbes (@melforbes) – Seaglass Blue is a recent favorite, lyrical and bittersweet.

These are just a few (apologies to those that didn’t come to mind immediately). Fortunately for readers, there’s an astonishing number of authors who have written in TXF fandom whom you can depend on for a good yarn, insightful character study, and/or ingenious “fixes” where 1013 went awry.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Probably the two set in my own (former) backyard of Southern California: Enivrez-vous and Ravenous. I’d first read the Baudelaire poem that was the source of the former’s title back in university days, so I was tickled to be able to use a few lines as an epigraph. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online? It’s not out of the realm possibility. I’d meant for “Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas” to be followed up with “And One Time She Did.” In fact, the idea for that never-finished story was what inspired “Three Times” in the first place. I have a couple of scenes sketched out and – unusually for me – even know exactly how to end it. Every year, November rolls around, and I think I should finish and post it…maybe in 2021?

Where do you get ideas for stories? Sometimes it’s from my environment. “Enivrez-vous” and “Ravenous” describe places that I’m fond of, that made me want to place Mulder and Scully there. “What Not to Wear” has that element too – I set it in Memphis as a tribute to a great trip there with a sister Musean. But WNTW was also inspired by a kink challenge in a years-ago LiveJournal thread, so sometimes ideas come from fandom discussions or even other fanfics. In the House MD fandom, a fic by another writer made me want to continue the story, and the author kindly allowed an authorized sequel. What's the story behind your pen name? I wanted my pseudonym to sound like it could be a real person’s name – or at least, maybe like a romance writer’s pen name – rather than an online handle. I also wanted to use a slightly obscure fictional character, to amuse anyone in the know. I had long had a bit of an obsession with Whit Stillman’s 1990s film trilogy, which started with Metropolitan; the 3rd installment, Last Days of Disco, came out the same year I started down the TXF rabbit hole: 1998. The central heroine of Metropolitan – who is mentioned in or makes a cameo in the other two – is Audrey Rouget, a lover of Austen and, eventually, a book editor. I altered the spelling of the last name as a nod to every writer’s companion, Roget’s Thesaurus. Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions? I have a few close friends – from outside TXF fandom – who know that I’ve written fanfic. I don’t know if they know my pseud; if they do, or if they’ve ready any of the fic, they haven’t said so to me. They are fannish sorts themselves, but not really TXF fans. A smattering of other friends and family members know or could intuit that I’ve been a fangrl on some level for years. My boss, whom I’ve known for about 3 years, recently mentioned off-handedly that she was really obsessed with TXF “back in the day,” and I am DYING to know if she got involved in fandom, but don’t think I’ll ever work up the courage to ask.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now? Most of the X-Files stuff continues to be generously and steadfastly archived by Forte at The Basement Office. The House MD stories and some TXF things are at fanfiction.net; same for AO3. If ever post anything new, it will probably go to TBO and AO3. I really ought to get it all together in one place, one of these days…

(Posted by Lilydale on April 6, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #audrey roget

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world-of-puppets · 4 years

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Puppetry Lost Media

In honour of reaching 50 followers last week (now 55 followers, as of writing this) I decided to cover two subjects of great interest to me: puppetry (of course) and lost media.

Everybody online loves a good old bit of lost media. Whether it be being a part of the many searches for the media in question, or watching documentaries about them on sites like YouTube. I’ve been mildly addicted to the latter kind of content for a while. From what I’ve seen, though, there aren’t many videos or articles out there specifically covering lost puppetry. So, in no particular order, here are a couple of pieces of lost puppetry I found while scrolling through the lost media wiki.

銀河少年隊 - Ginga shounen-tai AKA Galaxy Boy Troop (1963 - 1965)

Osamu Tezuka is one of the most pioneering figures in Japanese art and animation. Starting as a manga artist in the 1940s inspired by the animated works of American studios such as Walt Disney and the Fliecer Brothers, he adapted and simplified many of the stylistic techniques of both artists to create his own signature style of big shiny eyes, physics defying hair and limited animation. A style that would go on to heavily influence the world of anime and manga as a whole.

But animation and graphic art were not the only mediums Tezuka would dabble in. Ginga Shounen-Tai, or Galaxy Boy Troop in english, was a television series that aired on the public broadcast channel NHK from April 7th, 1963 to April 1st, 1965. Running for 2 seasons with a total of 92 episodes.

The series was a mixture of marionette characters that utilised the Supermarionation marionette technique, popularised by Jerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds, and limited traditional animation. The story revolves around a child genius named Roy who leads a rag-tag group of heros around the galaxy in a rocket ship in order to revive the earth’s sun and later protect it from alien invaders.

Out of the 92 episodes that aired, only episode 67 still exists in its entirety with French subtitles, and the full episode can be found on YouTube with English subtitles uploaded by user Rare TezukaVids. According to user F-Man on the Tezuka in English forums, footage of episode 28 exists but with no audio, and episode 87’s animated segments exist without the marionette segments. F-Man also claims the reason for Galaxy Boy Troop’s disappearance is due to Tezuka not being proud of the series and having all episodes of it destroyed.

Personally, I think it’s a shame that pretty much all of this series is gone. From what I’ve seen in episode 67, it looks really charming. Tezuka’s signature character design style was adapted suprisingly well to marionettes, and the puppetry itself isn’t that bad either. I love the little face mechanisms like the blinking eyes, flapping mouths and others. It gives the puppets a lot of personality and charm. Like, just look at this old mans eyebrow mechanism and tell me you wouldn’t want to watch 92 episodes of this show;

Tinseltown (2007)

Tinseltown was a 15 minute sitcom pilot created by the Jim Henson company under thier Henson Alternative banner. The pilot was commissioned by the Logo Network and aired as part of the Alien Boot Camp programming block in 2007.

The pilot (and likely the series, had it been picked up by the logo network) features a cast of both puppets and live actors as characters. The premise revolves around Samson Kight, an anthropomorphic bull preformed by Brian Henson and drew Massey, and his partner Bobby Vegan, an anthropomorphic pig prefomed by Bill Barretta and Michelan Sisti, as they attempt to balance thier lives working in Hollywood with life as parents to thier sullen 12-year-old foster son, Foster, played by Paul Butcher. Other human characters included Mia Sara as Samson’s ex-wife Lena and Francesco Quinn as the family’s manservant Arturo.

The Tinseltown pilot used to be available on the Logo Network’s YouTube channel, but was later removed for unknown reason. Since then, the pilot has not been made available online. However the characters Samson and Bobby have made appearances in other Henson related works, such as the improv stage show Stuffed and Unstrung, where they played the role as the shows producers, and in a 2011 video on the Jim Henson Company YouTube channel celebrating Jim Hensons 75th birthday.

I find Tinseltown pretty interesting as I feel like it should be more noateable or known, considering that this is (as far as my knowledge goes) the first Jim Henson Company project featureing openly lgbtq characters as its leads, and would have been the first Henson show to do so had it been picked up. As someone who’s interested in lgbtq+ representation in creative media such as animation, I realised that there’s not many examples of canon lgbt characters in puppetry. The only ones aside from Samson and Bobby I could think off the top of my head would be Deet’s Dads from The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and Rod from Avenue Q. Though, obviously, there could be more I’m not currently aware of. I don’t think the Tinseltown pilot was a masterpiece or anything. After all, there’s probably a couple of good reasons Logo didn’t pick it up for a full series. But I think it be cool if either Henson co. or Logo made this available online again, if just so we could appericate it as an interesting little footnote in the history of lgbtq rep in puppetry.

With that said, considering the pilot’s obscurity and the fact that it’s main couple haven’t been used in any Henson Related projects in almost ten years, as well as the possibility that there may be legalities preventing the Henson company from releasing it such as Logo still owning the rights, it’s unlikely we’ll see the Tinseltown pilot anytime soon.

Sonic Live in Sydney (1997 - 2000)

Sonic the Hedgehog is a fictional character no stranger to multiple interpretations of him and his universe across a diverse range of media. From the more light-hearted and comedic stylings of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Cartoon Networks Sonic Boom cartoon series, to more serious faire such as the Sonic SatAM cartoon and the Sonic Adventure videogame duology. One of the more obscure and stranger adaptations of the character came in the form of Sonic Live in Sydney, a one an a half hour live show hosted at the former Sega World Sydney amusement park in Darling Harbor, Sydney, Australia. Originally beginning as a live show with actors in meet-and-greet style costumes, the show eventually was replaced with a puppet show during its last two years.

The shows plot was set in an alternate timeline whos continuity was a mix of the SatAM cartoon and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, where Doctor Robotnik’s Death Egg crash lands in Sydney, Australia instead of Angel Island and attempts to take over before being foiled by sonic and friends. According to Phillip Einfeld of Phillip Einfeld Puppetoons, the company that made the puppets, Sega felt the costumed actor version of the show wasn’t dynamic enough, and wished to replace it with a version featuring live puppets with animatronics. Both versions of the shows plot are identical.

While Sonic Live in Sydney’s soundtrack is available on YouTube, and some photos of the show are available on the Lost Media Wiki, no footage of either the costumed actors version or the puppet show version have resurfaced. The show was closed down in 1999, possibly due to cost, shortly before the Sega World park as a whole in 2000. So unless there is someone out there who viseted the show between 1998 or 1999 who recorded the show via a handheld camera, footage of both incarnations of the show are likely forever lost to time.

On a personal note, I don’t have much to say on this one other than how gloriously peek gaudy 90s Sonic the set/puppet design is. I have no doubt finding footage of these puppets in action would truly be a silly delight to behold...

Legend of Mary (year unknown)

This one is a little different from the other entries on this list as while the film itself in its entiraty is available on YouTube for anyone to view, the information surrounding Legend of Mary, specifically its year of release, remains a mystery as of writing this.

I have mentioned the film before on this blog so I’ll keep it brief here: in summary, Legend of Mary is a short film retelling of the Nativity featuring the Rod puppets of Austrian puppeteer Richard Teschner. the video was uploaded to YouTube by user canada 150 archive. I looked up the people credited in the film and was able to find most of them, but didn’t find Legend of Mary listed in thier credits, and was unable to find the film on sites like IMDB, tMDB or Letterboxd. I reached out to Canada 150 archive asking if they had any info regarding the Legend of Mary’s release date, and after a coupe of months, they replied saying they didn’t know.

And that’s as far as I got on my search for answers, if anyone of you guys has any information regarding Legend of Mary, then it be of huge help in finding the release date.

Sam and friends (1955 - 1961)

Sam and friends was the very first puppetry television series created by Jim Henson alongside his colabarator and future wife Jane Nebel. filmed in Washington, D.C. and airing twice daily on WRC-TV and the NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C. from May 9, 1955, to December 15, Sam and Friends would mark the first apperence of Kermit (though not yet as a frog) and paved the way for Henson’s iconic and revered legacy in the realm of puppetry on film and television.

With the impact this show had in mind, it may come as a shock to some that almost half of Sam and Friends, specifically, 42 of the 86 episodes, are considered lost. With 16 existing, 8 documented, 9 known from memory, plus 8 existing Esskay commercials and 1 memory-known Esskay commercial. Some taped episodes have been shown at venues such as the museum of the moving image while others have been erased. It’s unknown if copies of these erased episodes still exist.

This post would become far to long if I were too list every episode missing from Sam and Freinds, but if your curious, the lost media wiki article has a comprehensive list of all lost episodes.

Annnd that about it for this post. This type of content is pretty different from the stuff I usually post. So I’m egar to see what you guys think about it. If you enjoyed this article, want to see more like it or have ideas for what puppetry-related topics I should cover in the future. And again, thank you all so much for helping me reach 55 followers. Your support really does mean a lot to me, and I hope you enjoyed this as a follower milestone gift.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this dip into lost puppetry, and have a happy holiday season!

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utilitycaster · 4 years

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as a fellow member of the tribe lol i think jewish caleb hc get a bit uncomfy given the zemnian = d&d german connection and liam explicitly stating that he took a lot of inspiration from the german student resistance to the nazis. i dont think itd be fair to matt/liam to call the volstruckers d&d nazis but when you start throwing jewish hc in there it gets a bit awkward

So the OP of that post is Jewish, I believe, and iirc Liam actually said that he explicitly tried to distance from the Nazis specifically because he was doing a character with a German accent [which, and this came up as a fandom discussion relatively early in the campaign, is itself complicated; growing up as an American-born Jewish person in an Ashkenazi synagogue, the first German accents I heard were primarily from survivors, and I happen to have a very German-sounding last name for a combination of Yiddish/Ellis Island name change reasons despite being of more eastern European Jewish descent]. I believe he stated the inspiration was more from the KGB (though there are definitely some parallels with Nazis, particularly the Vollstrucker final exam). So that’s actually not what made me say “this doesn’t make sense!” I fully get if other Jewish people are somewhat uncomfortable, but based on how the Empire and specifically the Vollstruckers act I actually agree that a Cold War secret police model (KGB/Stasi) seems much more in line with the depiction in the show.

Jewish headcanons make me kind of uncomfortable in fantasy media not set in the real world because of a couple of reasons I’ve stated before. The main one is that Judaism is an explicitly monotheistic religion; it flat out does not make sense in a world that canonically has multiple, objectively real gods. It makes sense in a setting like the Unsleeping City, which is modern day NYC except there’s magic (and the only cleric is really more a cleric of a concept than a god) and I think that was fairly well-done representation, but in Exandria it’s the same idea as having an atheist - a monotheist in this world is just an idiot. So you end up with cultural markers, and there are plenty of people irl who are culturally but not religiously Jewish, which is entirely valid - but those people exist within a backdrop of Judaism being an ethnoreligion and the culture comes from that, and if you take away the religion you cannot really have the rest of it make sense. At this point I should note I’m probably thinking about this more than anyone asked, but I’ve never had a taste for headcanons that aren’t consistent with the worldbuilding because the worldbuilding is the framework on which I build everything else.

Culturally speaking though Caleb just doesn’t strike me as having a Jewish approach to things! I think it’s an older post - it just crossed my dash so I’d have to check to see where it lined up with the main campaign - but Caleb talks about being irredeemable and damned in a way that strikes me as, especially if you get into the meta-narrative of the actor not being Jewish, very culturally Christian. I have a lot of thoughts that probably belong on a different post but I find a lot of the discussion on redemption arcs in fandom to be super culturally Christian, too, which is fair! I think someone raised Catholic is going to feel very differently about the concept of redemption than I do. I see it as a very positive term that is highly subjective, and a process, not a binary state, but I also think that my view of it is influenced by my religious and cultural upbringing.

Meanwhile I do actually think a case can be made for Jester’s morality to fit Jewish philosophy - that she tends to judge people on their current actions rather than any general ideology, for example - but I have to say I don’t get how tieflings are supposed to be Jewish-coded in Exandria, at all, unless we are either dipping into some pretty unfortunate stereotypes; tieflings are pretty heavily based on like, the mythology of hell and devils, which is explicitly very Christian.

I guess while I’m explaining myself, I’ve found Caduceus’s arc, of someone raised within a small minority tradition, who is still deeply connected to it but is starting to question quite how he fits in, to be very resonant with me - I was raised moderately religious and became less so as an adult, but still find a lot of meaning in some religious rituals. I also find the Wildmother approach to death and dying to be much more in line with Jewish traditions (specifically simple burial, “you are dust and to dust you shall return” as a neutral or positive concept, and an emphasis on the people left behind by death vs. the dead person) than the Raven Queen who always struck me as having a view of death I just could not connect with on any sort of philosophical level. Like, again, I don’t headcanon Jewish characters in traditional D&D settings; it always kind of feels awkward and token-ish, but Caduceus has by far been the character I could relate to the most in terms of religion.

I suspect OP was just having fun with a modern AU or something though; I just found the part about Caduceus so weird because I had the exact opposite feeling that I had to comment.

#critical role #Anonymous

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writingwithcolor · 5 years

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Including diversity where there may be little

Including diversity where there may be little: Black Radium Girls as example

post-scriptvm asked: [ask clipped for length]

I have an interest in the ‘Radium Girls’, groups of women who worked at studios in America from the late 1910s onwards painting radium onto clock faces, and later took their companies to court for the horrible impacts the radium had on their body.

I want to make a musical, just for fun. I’ve decided to use a fictionalized version of events, with composite characters based on multiple different women, rather than one of the real-life groups and the actual women from them. It will be mostly set in New Jersey, in the roaring 20s.

Neither of the two real-life groups I know of had any Black women in them, and I can’t see any Black women in any of the big group photos of the dial factories’ employees. But I know there’s a lot of Black history and culture in that time and place bc of the great migration and stuff, so I feel like if I’m not going to use the real life ladies, I should probably take the opportunity to also make some of them Black, bc making a whole cast of white ladies in the name of potentially wrong ‘historical accuracy’ seems like a bad thing.

My question is, should I? [ask clipped for length]

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were African American radium girls. Speculating People of Color/Women of Color’s involvement is far more realistic than portraying everyone as white. Go for it!

Perhaps look into what other races were predominantly in the New Jersey area for inspiration, too.

Hidden History

This section features just a few examples of PoC in lesser known historical settings.

The histories of People of Color are highly and actively erased. Women of Color especially get their stories left to footnotes in the textbooks. You hear about certain amazing women again and again, but there’s so many others that don’t get their time of day.

Hidden Figures (book and movie) is a prime example of that erasure and lesser known history. To summarize: It’s “the powerful story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program.”

Here’s another example:

Photo of female firefights on Pearl Harbor, 1941. Identities unknown

It would be nice to know more about these women, and i’ve seen inquiries from people requesting info from anyone who may know. This struggle to find details is a prime example of that erasure in itself.

Enemies in Love: A German POW, a Black Nurse, and an Unlikely Romance by Alexis Clark

The book pictured above is the true story of a Black nurse and German Prisoner of War who fall in love during World War II. They face many hardships (disowning from his family, racism, and shunning from towns) but stay together for their whole lives, marry, and have children (One of their sons highly informed the writing of the book!)

This book discusses the discrimination the Black soldiers and nurses faced. They struggled to even be allowed to serve their country, and were treated worse than POWs.

Video: The Unlikely Romance of a Black Nurse & German P.O.W. in WW II

Research

Research “[RACE] + Firsts” and find many more examples of little unknown bits of history where they’ve been involved.

First doesn’t mean it came without limitations, discrimination or hardships. But they happened, and many sooner than you’d think.

Explore beyond what you know about whitewashed history and learn the true stories of People of Color.

Making it “realistic”

People will question how “realistic” it is to feature a Black women in this position for the time period, unfortunately. It doesn’t hurt to provide an explanation until we get to a place where diversity isn’t interrogated when it shows up.

Giving her backstory.

You can briefly explain the journey to the job, such as shortages due to a war. Take a look at those real world firsts for inspiration.

Especially take a look at the specific region of the story. What firsts were there? Any government power influences? How did PoC break barriers to make the strides they did?

Use the web, but also go beyond. Seek books, historians, artwork. Search those “footnotes” for that one sentence mention. (That’s actually how the writer of Enemies in Love found their story. Just a quick sentence and a search for the story began. It helped that she was a journalist!)

Relationships with Peers:

“I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.” - Susan B. Anthony

White women weren’t, historically, welcoming to Black women. For example, white sufferists insisted Black women march in the back of the protests for, allegedly, both their rights. You’ll need to decide how your Black woman is treated in this situation.

You might face the following from peers, superiors, or others:

Hesitation to work or interact with her

Curiosity and intrigue (The “Other”

Unsure of how to approach or be friends with her

Microaggressions

Blatant racism

Your musical doesn’t seem like it is meant to focus too heavily on the hardships. It begs a mention, but just how much is up to you.

Call the Midwife, period racism example

Call the Midwife (BBC) is set in East End London, Late 1950s, early 1960s. The show features a Black midwife named Lucille Anderson. There’s a shortage on nurses so Caribbean nurses were being called in to support the growing population.

Call the Midwife is from a midwife, Jennifer Worth’s, memoir, so it’s based on history.

Check out this short clip: Nurse Lucille Anderson - Call the Midwife

Lucille on Call the Midwife (Take notes!)

The show handles racism and microaggressions very well. It’s not overdone.

Lucille is accepted by her peers and is especially close to one of the girls.

There’s an episode where she actively faces blame and discrimination during a case. It’s a major story line of the episode.

She does face occasional micro-aggressions where she is othered, but it is not every single time she is on screen and not every episode.

Her peers talk to her about her experiences and in the case where she had an aggressive family member to deal with, they tried to protect her by reassigning her from the family. Lucille asks to handle it her way and they respect her decision.

Lucille can mostly perform her job and have peace, and is treated kindly by patients.

She has a personality, a romantic life, family & friendships.

It’s about 90% allowing her to exist, 10% navigating racism/microaggressions. That’s a comfortable, realist balance for such a story and setting.

If you want to check out how they handled these issues for yourself, the show is on Netflix as of this post (2020). She’s introduced in Season 7. (I highly recommend watching this show from the beginning. I cry like every episode, and the diversity of several ethnic backgrounds picks up a lot mid season!)

I’ll kick you three scenarios for your Black radium girl:

Peer Acceptance, Initial Hesitation

awkward friendliness & initial hesitation, perhaps more fear of the unknown vs. hostility

Upon having interactions and talking to her, they become comfortable and accept her. It could take just one simple conversation. Perhaps they’re more used to listening to Black music or have Black staff who work for them, but haven’t had an equal one-on-one experience with WoC without a power dynamic or service involved. Now, with a Black fellow radium girl thrown in a similar situation as them, they could develop kinship.

This might not describe every one of the woman at all. Others might be just fine with her with no awkwardness.

Types of racism experienced:

some micro-aggressions (likely ignorance from peers)

no major racism experienced

Most Peer Acceptance, Racism From Some Peers

Most peers have no problem with her, even if they have their initial awkwardness. 1-2 more aggressive racists who don’t want her there.

Sometimes everyone else gets along, but there’s that 1 bully and their minion, and they feed off each other. If the BS isn’t tolerated by the other girls, it could shut them up to make peace or at least behave themselves. It’s likely someone like this would remain hatefully stubborn, but would grimace from the corner if outnumbered.

In the case you create a situation where someone is hostile to the Black girl but learns better: real apologies and efforts should be made if this occurs. It also doesn’t excuse their past behavior. Read our posts on redemption arcs for more info. We’re not fans, personally.

In an intense racial situation, it would be nice if the girls (with sense) protected and defended her instead of standing idly by. They’re strong enough to rise up against the agencies who poisoned them, so they can fight for their fellow radium sisters if one’s being targeted.

Types of racism experienced:

several micro-aggressions

maybe 1 major incident

Peer Acceptance, Racism from Other People

Radium girl acceptance within, but experiences racism from others she interacts with on/off the job.

The Call the Midwife example fits this one. Lucille’s peers are comfortable with her. It’s some of the ladies she care for and/or their families that may have negative things to say or show hesitance.

I’ll repeat what I said above: it’d be nice if the girls protected and defended her and didn’t stand by idly. Solidarity is important for establishing kinship and trust when it comes to white - woc friendships.

Types of racism experienced:

could vary from some to several micro-aggressions

maybe 1 major incident

Balancing race issues in the musical

Give the intersections of your Black girl’s situation proper attention. You can achieve this without overdoing it or making her whole arc about facing racism.

Perhaps the Black radium girl(s) has a song to express major woes, like segregation and poor treatment, or experiencing dismay over even less of a fighting chance in this fight for their rights.

If anyone does know anything but radium girls of color, please share!

–Mod Colette

#intersectionality #intersectional feminism #women #black #black women #woc #women of color #diversity #poc in history #radium girls #musicials #asks #submission

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brooklynmuseum · 4 years

Photo

Imagine holding this quilt in your hands. What might it feel like? How would you describe the materials used? What words come to mind as you look at the patterns?

Viewers of this quilt and others like it have often remarked that, while at first it seemed chaotic or haphazard, there is an internal order or rhythm that emerges the longer one looks. Stitched from multiple pieces of cloth—whether from scraps, from cloth objects no longer usable or needed, or from reams of cloth purchased for this purpose—quilts like this one are remarkable works that demonstrate skill in design and in geometry. Whether cut from cloth purchased specifically for quilting or whether the pieces had another “life” before being incorporated into this quilt, all were carefully selected and meticulously placed by the artist Anna Williams, an African American woman whose quilting work gained recognition by collectors in the 1990s and continues to serve as inspiration for textile artists today.

Anna Williams was born to the southeast of Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1927 where she was raised by her mother and grandmother, both workers on a local plantation. After helping them in the fields during the day, Williams would spend her evenings learning to sew and quilt from her mother and grandmother. “I would pick up the strings of materials that fell to the floor, and I started making dresses for my dolls using the strings,” Williams recalled.

While Williams learned traditional patterns used in quilting from her family, she, like many quilters, improvises when she makes her own quilts rather than adhering to a specific pattern. This quilt is made up of triangles pieced together to form blocks. This “pinwheel block” pattern forms the underlying structure of the quilt, but Williams allows herself the freedom to deviate from it with additional strips of cloth as needed.

Quilts are the product of great labor. There is the creative labor of selecting the cloth with patterns and colors that will fulfill the creator’s vision, and there is the physical labor - the many hours spent carefully cutting and stitching the pieces together. Often historically associated with women (though men have also been identified as quilters), this labor and the creativity involved in the creation of quilts went largely unrecognized until the mid-twentieth century, when museums began to hang quilts as forms of abstract art. Today, quilts continue to be shown in Museums, but are recognized in a multitude of ways - from being hung like abstract art to being appreciated as their own, unique aesthetic and art practice.

Beyond their functionality and decorative beauty, however, quilts are also acts of care. Quilting is often a group activity, bringing together a community. In such gatherings or quilting bees, the stories shared between the artists are valued and the quilting community provides each other with both social and emotional support. When they are finished, quilts are used to care for the community and become layered with new memories. Another quilter, Lucy T. Pettway of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, described using the quilts she made for her children to lay on: “used to spread down quilts all the time at night. I spread a quilt down and let the children sleep until they get cool, you know. Then we'd get in the house.” The process of quilting can also be an act of self-care and means of expression.. As Williams herself noted, her nightly routine of working on her quilts was a way to “keep my mind off my troubles.”

What other ways can art be a part of care networks? What is the relationship between labor and acts of care? Share your thoughts with us, and explore some more of the quilts in our open collection.

Posted by Christina Marinelli Anna Williams (American, 1927-2010). Quilt, 1995. Cotton, synthetics. Brooklyn Museum, Gift in memory of Horace H. Solomon, 2011.18

#howtolook #bkmeducation #anna williams #quilts #bkmdecarts #art education #art ed #close looking #art #artist #quilt makers #community #labor #care #abstract #quilter #brooklyn museum

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carewyncromwell · 3 years

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What was your process for creating your Cinderella AU? Did your author’s notes come from existing knowledge? Did you watch a lot of documentaries? Did the song that plays through the whole story inspire parts of the story, or was it more of a lucky find that happened to fit extraordinarily well?

Oh gosh, such questions!! My heart!! 💗 Let’s see if I can break this down...

What was your process for creating your Cinderella AU?

Like with most of my stories, I wrote a general plot outline, to start with. Cinderella as a fairy tale has never really been one of my favorites, so there were a few things I wanted to play with in order to mix things up, as well as some ideas I liked from those Cinderella adaptations I do really enjoy that I wanted to incorporate. Ever After was clearly the biggest influence (since it’s a Cinderella told in a pre-Renaissance historical fiction setting where the Prince and Cinderella roles meet long before the ball), but even in Ever After, I kind of feel like we see more reason for Henry to love Danielle than vice-versa, and because of the 90′s post-feminist slant, the story tends to write Danielle as a strong woman largely by making her more traditionally masculine. This is actually something I prefer about the 1998 TV film adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella starring Brandy and Whitney Houston -- that our Cinderella is strong because of traditionally feminine traits like kindness and that she even has a scene with Prince Christopher where she raises her eyebrows at being considered “not like other girls.” I also decided to take the idea of the Prince dressing as a commoner from R&H Cinderella and the idea of Cinderella dressing as a noble from Ever After and smash them together so that both of them are sort of on equal footing, hiding something really important from each other and yet also showing that they care about each other for who they are rather than what they are through their interactions with each other. Plus it made me laugh a little, thinking of throwing you all for a loop when you realized that the Prince Carewyn was going to work for in the palace was NOT Orion. XDD

Did your author’s notes come from existing knowledge? Did you watch a lot of documentaries?

Yes and no to the first question...and to the second, yeah! I have studied the Tudors and Elizabeth’s reign specifically through documentaries and such, but not nearly as in depth as eras like the Golden Age of Piracy (which helped me write the POTC AU) and the American Revolution (my personal favorite period of history). So yeah, a lot of the fashion history I researched while working on the project and even at points inspired certain story choices, such as ceruse being the closest equivalent to modern concealer. In the case of things like animal symbolism or the lore of Robin Hood, a lot of that was stuff I already knew, because I quite honestly love going down various nerdy rabbit holes for seemingly no reason at all, and sometimes amazingly what I find in those holes ends up becoming useful for something I’m writing when I least expect it. XD

Did the song that plays through the whole story inspire parts of the story, or was it more of a lucky find that happened to fit extraordinarily well?

Hahaha, “No One is Alone,” quite frankly, was a perfectly lovely surprise. I had seen it cropping up originally just at the beginning and then at the end as something to give Carewyn hope, but when I used it as writing accompaniment while first writing the scene where Orion gives the sheet music for it to Carewyn, I heard a lot more potential in it also as a cautionary song (which, admittedly, it is in the show Into the Woods), and therefore as an anti-War song. It played into Orion’s motivations and could serve as a great refrain for later, when Carewyn and her friends are starting to question whether Florence really means them harm. And that was exciting! Playing into the multiple messages you could hear into the words was a lot of fun. :)

Director’s Cut Ask! // Read the Cinderella AU here!

#director's cut ask #personal #ask me

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kpurereactions · 4 years

Text

Love Shot

CHAPTER 1

A/N: Hello lovelies, Ive been working on this piece for quite a while now and im finally ready to post it. This was inspired by one of my favorite fics of all time, Good Girl, but given my own little twist. I hope you all love Love Shot as much as I do.

Pairing: Exo x Reader

Rating: Drama, Angst, Smut, Fluff

WARNINGS: Language, Eventual Violence, Lots of Smut Later on

Chapter | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

I let a smile touch my lips before taking a deep breath in, nodding once at the crisp evening air before turning to lock the door of my new combined studio and apartment. It was the first day where fall really felt like fall. The scent of rain lingered under the dense clouds and the sun was already halfway gone. I had moved back to Seoul only three months ago after being gone for only a little under a year. I had originally came to Seoul to get my masters in painting and painting theory, though I quickly gained enough local fame and connections that no one could quite understand why I left. So I came back.

I stood on the side of the road, my arm outstretched as I wait for a cab. My closest friend from school in the city was opening his gallery tonight and from the posts on my snapchat I could tell a lot of old classmates were already there. Song Mino was the first friend I made when I first moved here. He was talented and refused to fit into the art box the professor tried to force all his students into, as if art should be something someone else tells you to do. It should be your own thing. We had that in common. My style is simplistic. Aesthetic. Easy to look at, but the more you look the more you see behind the top layer. We both strived to challenge the viewer, and because of that we grew really close in our attempt to stick it to the man.

The first show is always the biggest event of an artist's career, and knowing I was seconds away from Mino’s brought another smile to my face as excitement seemed to run through my toes. I couldn't believe how hard he had been working, despite him refusing to let me see anything he had made to showcase.

The gallery itself was breathtaking, I couldn't help but note the obviously more ‘manly’ stain he had chosen for the wooden columns that broke the continuous glass of the front of the gallery. I was the one who helped him make his mind up. I took it in as it was its own work of art before I even walked up the short staircase to the front doors. The tall white walls were similar to my own space, but his had matching wooden floors and walls that were scattered around the room that broke your vision from seeing everything at once. I gave myself another smile as I noticed familiar faces of old classmates and Professors.

It didn't surprise me when I first walked in that I was being asked about the past year and how I’ve been. I was hard to miss, not just because I stood taller than a majority of the women in the room. The constant questioning reminded me why I chose to fail at reaching out when I got back. I made a point to keep trying to catch eye contact with Mino, who only seemed to mask the chuckle from escaping his lips, choosing to leave me to struggle with the boring repetition of the conversations I was having. I finally found the opportunity to excuse myself and all but power walk over to Mino, pretending not to see anyone else I recognized.

“American style!” He said excitedly, pulling me into a hug.

“Don't you ever leave me to the wolves like that again” I whispered in his ear before pulling back. “Mino this is awesome, I’ve only seen a few pieces but im so proud of you!” I said covering up my mild threat before hugging him tightly again. He chuckled with bright eyes before giving my arms a squeeze. His eyes widened as he remembered the man standing next to him.

“Y/n, this is Junmyeon. He is a curator who graduated a few years before us. I've been telling him about your work.” He said as my attention moved to the slick haired man.

“You were talking about me at your own opening?” I said reaching for his hand to shake it.

“I actually asked specifically about you.” Junmyeon said with a soft smile that slowly grew.

“Oh, wow.” I tried to get out past the sound of my heart fluttering at his radiant smile. “Its very nice to meet you then.”

I was informed that Junmyeon was planning on stopping by my studio in the next few days, which brought on a new wave a nerves I've never experienced before. It wasn't until Mino placed his hand on my back to excuse the two of us could I finally breathe.

“Jesus, why is he so intimidating?” I said looking back over my shoulder as he dipped his chin to take a sip of his drink.

“If you think he’s intimidating your crazy” Mino said, leading me over to the first piece he wanted to show me.

“Did he asked to buy any of your work?” I asked before he could change the topic.

“All of it.” Mino said with a big smile.

“All of it?!”

“Yes. He’ll probably buy a lot of your stuff too. It’s more his style anyways.”

“Oh my god.” I said shaking my head.

I let Mino take control of the conversation as he began to explain the clay molded figure in front of us. I spent the rest of my time there following Mino around, while sipping on my wine and listening to him talk. Even though, as much as I was paying attention, it was hard to get your mind off of Junmyeon.

“Promise me you wont sell this one. I know you promised everything but see if this one could be an exception. I want to buy it.” I said pointing at a tall, organic figure of a woman. The memory of when Mino had made it flooded back as it was my first time to ever pose for another artist.

“Ill ask.” he said smiling before taking my hand and leading me to the next piece.

I tried to stay as late as I could. Mino was off somewhere talking art leaving me once again to be interrogated by my former classmates who all seemed to be very smug about the fact that I had yet to have an opening. It didn't matter what valid excuse I would give, they only cared that it hasn't happened yet. Thankfully I must have looked as uncomfortable as I felt since a hand wrapped around my arm to pull me back. I was just about to thank Mino for coming back and saving me when I turned to face Junmyeon.

“You didn't look too excited about that.” He said looking back over to the three girls who were all staring with confused and almost jealous looks in their eyes.

“Good to know it was obvious.” I said taking a sip of wine. Just as I was about to say something else Mino walked up.

“I think I'm going to head out. I have a pick up early in the morning.” I said, trying not to make it sound like I was at my ropes end with the girls who had added whispering to their staring. I smiled and quickly kissed Mino’s cheek softly before turning to Junmyeon and shaking his hand again, trying to do so without having to hear a protest from Mino.

The air outside sobered me up a little, and because of how nice it was outside I couldn't help but smile and start to walk down the sidewalk. Mino’s studio wasn't that far from mine, just a few blocks down and a horseshoe turn away, so I placed my hands in my coat pocket and began to walk. I let my eyes wander from the fashion that was passing me to the way the lights reflected off the puddles left from the rain that morning. Just as I was really starting to enjoy my walk the sky opened again, soft raindrops falling from the sky.

I sighed, of course this would happen. Clocking where I was I dipped into an alley, deciding the fastest way to get out of the rain in my heels would be to cut through the alleyways. Usually this idea was fine. I would maybe run into one or two strangers, but they were usually restaurant owners who were taking the trash out or sweeping their areas so the sound of voices deeper in the alley didn't really bother me.

“Kai come on! Oh my god no.” I heard a man laugh deeper into the darkness of the alley. But as I got closer to my studios back door I realized the figure I could hardly make out at first were men. Multiple men. Usually this wouldn't bother me but as I got closer the feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach started to deepen and deepen.

I took a deep breath when I started to pass them, my heart beating a million miles a minute while trying to keep a poker face to seem unphased so they wouldn't pay me any mind. Until they did.

“Hey wait!” I heard one of them call. I quicken my step slightly. Not to show I was scared, but just incase. “Wait, where are you going? I’ll walk you home.”

I looked up to see a half lit face walking backwards in front of me. I squinted slightly to try to get my eyes to adjust to what was under the ball cap he wore, but there was no use.

‘Shit’ I thought. I was staring too long. I looked away and quickened my step again.

“Oh come on! At least tell me your name!” He shouted after he stopped, his voice now behind me.

I was able to breathe again once my key was in my door, officially sure he stopped following me. But still the shape of the man's mouth was enough to stay in my brain as I flicked the lights to my gallery on and made my way upstairs to my bed.

___

“Mino I swear they were so scary.” I said pushing my denim painting shirt up past my elbows before wrapping my hands around the coffee cup that sat in front of me.

“I just don't understand why you didnt call a cab when you left.” He said sitting back in his chair, obviously taking it out on himself for not seeing me off safely.

“I just wanted to walk. I didn't plan on going through the alley.” I grumbled. I hated when Mino tried to school me. He was only a few months older than I was, and although I knew here it meant something different, he also knew that where I’m from it didn't.

“Do you at least remember what they looked like?” He asked, noticing my mood change.

“Um.. kind of. There were like five or six of them, but I only got a good look at one of them. He was a little taller than you, pillow lips… he was wearing a hat so I really didn't get a good look at his eyes. But he had to have been an athlete of some sort.” I said, my words getting quieter as I realized I would have had nothing to go off of if something bad had happened.

The coffee date ended with Mino once again scolding me, which I knew I deserved, but there was only so much I could take without pouting all the way home. I couldn't help thinking about the man in the hat. Why he was there in the alley with his friends. Why did he follow me, but then give up so easily? It's not like his friends were calling him back. If he was going to bother me in the first place, why give up? The more I thought about what had happened the more I worked myself up. They probably saw me unlock my door. What if they showed up in my studio? What if they came back with more people?

I half thought about texting Mino, but knew there was no point. He would be more worried about it than I was and he had better things to do then baby sit me in my own home. So instead, the moment I got inside I turned my windows down, making sure no one could see inside my studio incase they were passing to see if I was there. It was weird, though, this new set fear was enough to put me into overdrive. My inspiration hit me in my face and I couldn't pull a fresh canvas out fast enough to get the blurred images of last night down.

———

Music played loudly as I was lost in my own world. A galaxy of light and dark colors swirled and blended into one another across my canvas creating the confusing, but exciting pattern that seemed to get better with every stroke.

I was pulled out of my own head when the sound of someone's voice yelling over the music made me look up. I smiled to see Junmyeon and two other men trailing him into the room.

“Oh! One second please!” I said trying to press pause with the clean part of my palm. “Sorry, I didn't realize how loud that had gotten.” I said wiping my hand on my shirt before shaking Junmyeons hand.

“Its fine, good to see your working so hard because I brought with me two potential buyers.” He said gesturing to the two men on his left. “This is Byun Baekhyun and Kim Jongin.” He said.

I smiled shaking Baekhyun's hand, but the moment I met Jongin's eyes I felt my body stiffened slightly. He was familiar. Almost to familiar. I forced the feeling to be shaken off though, there was no reason why he would have possibly been brought into my studio if he had been hiding out in the alleyway behind the building the night before. Or at least I had hoped. But there was something about the way he smiled at me that made me feel like he knew it too. That he had seen me the night prior too.

I tried hard not to think about it. If Junmyeon was there, I was safe and if he was the man he probably wouldn't try to do anything with two other people there to witness. I turned my attention back to Junmyeon who asked if he could look through my paintings.

“Oh of course. And the racks on this back wall have more in it. I rotate them so the ones that are up are only there because they have a similar theme.” I said before trying to smile as normal as possible and turning back to my easel.

My drive was gone. I was too busy focusing on Jongin, who stood there supporting his chin in his hand as he listens to Junmyeon explain why he liked a certain piece. I took this opportunity to text Mino. Now if any would be a good time to alert him.

Mino, I think the guy from last night in the hat is in my studio with Junmyeon. I don't know what to do.

“Y/n, were looking to fill a room. Do you have any others with these same earthy tones?” Junmyeon said, pulling my attention away from my phone.

“Oh, yes. There over here.” I said smiling, slipping my phone into my back pocket before leading the men over to the opposite wall. I walked them through my color schemes, explaining to them the way I had everything organized just incase they changed their mind on a color or style they wanted. I was surprised Junmyeon and Baekhyun were able to distract me from the thoughts swirling in my head for the rest of the time they were there, but it helped that Jongin stayed behind us, obviously not trying to chime in.

“Y/n, thank you once again for taking us in on such short notice. We will take the one on the wall and the two that have been stored if they are not already spoken for.”

“Of course, Ill wrap them for you so they’re ready to be taken.” I said turning to make a mental note as to which ones it was.

“Thank you again. We will be in touch.” He said, bowing his head slightly before taking my hand in a soft, yet firm hand shake.

“Thank you.” Baekhyun said sweetly as he took my hand next.

“Good to see you again. I hope to see you in the future as well” Jongin said with a small wink before taking my hand and giving it a firm shake.

The moment his hand touched mine my heart dropped. There couldn't be a way that was really him. The moment the door closed I reached for my phone again only to see Mino hadn't responded. It didn't stop me from quickly typing out another message, though.

It was him. It had to be him. Why else would he tell me it was good to see me again before winking if it wasn't him?

I looked up to see their backs bending one by one to get into the large black vehicle they came in, and once I was sure the door to the vehicle was closed and they weren't looking I quickly walked forward and locked the door again before backing up to my easel where I desperately tried to finish my work before deciding to just give up.

I couldn't focus. Not while finishing, not while making myself dinner, and not while I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep. I rolled to my side and reached for my phone. 3:00am. I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of my bed, taking my blanket with me and wrapping it tightly around my shoulders. I made your way up to the railing of my room slowly which allowed me look down onto my gallery. I wrapped the blanket closer over my shoulders before letting my elbows rest on the railing so I was more comfortably looking out the window. I smiled to myself finally feeling calm again. I loved how quiet the streets were at night. How all the colors of the lights around seemed to mix together on the rained on asphalt that laid below them.

It felt calm. But as my eyes were scanning I couldn't help but see two figures standing across the street. I squinted my eyes to try to catch a reflection of who the people were only to realize it was Jongin and Junmyeon. I stared at the two in shock as they talked across the road. They seemed to be laughing. I tried to calm myself down, telling myself they were probably just out getting drinks and just so happened to be standing across the street from my apartment. But then I remembered what the time was. I couldn't stop myself from panicking, and just as I was about to turn to hide myself, my eyes met with Jongin’s.

I didn't know it was possible for my heart to drop even further into my stomach as he gave me a devilish grin and wink. I scrambled back to my bedside table where I quickly reached for the remote that controls my space, knocking it off the table before I was able to press the button that made my windows go solid.

Chapter 2

#exo #exo fic #exo mafia #exo smut #exo reactions #exo drabbles #Junmyeon #Suho #Minseok #Xuimin #Baekhyun #Lay #Yixing #Jongdae #Chen #Jongin #Kai #Sehun #Chanyeol #Kyungsoo #DO

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lilydalexf · 4 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Sophia Jirafe

Seven of Sophia Jirafe’s fics are at Gossamer, but more of her X-Files stories are at AO3 (as sophiahelix). I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Stones and Bones. She was active in the fandom during the show’s run and has never strayed far from fandom in general. She co-founded Glass Onion, a great multi-fandom mailing list that now has nearly 1,000 fics from 100 fandoms at AO3. Big thanks to Sophia Jirafe for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

It did initially, but so many old shows are on streaming now and getting discovered by new people, it makes sense.

I did get a comment from someone who said my first story under this name, posted in early 2000 when I was a college freshman, was older than her by a couple of months, and THAT took me aback.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

It was my first fandom, discovered when I was 17 and searching for info about the show on the school library computer, and it really shaped my whole life! I met a lot of people I still know today (mostly in non-fannish venues like FB, though I do still have some connections in fandom), and learned a lot about writing and just life generally, since I was younger than most of fandom at the time.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I started off on a tiny forum at a website called Squirrel’s Nest, but I kept seeing people thanking Scullyfic in fic headers and eventually I was able to join the mailing list (which was capped to 500 members). Scullyfic was everything to me — I made friends, betas, discussed the show, learned about all kinds of things on Off-Topic Fridays, etc. A lot of those friends, I would email with or more often chat on AIM (individual or these sprawling group chats that would go on all day), and then at the end of 2001 we started migrating to Livejournal. I was getting into Buffy more by then, but it was still mostly the same crowd of people I knew from Scullyfic.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I feel like it started me on a whole life path really — finding that my deep obsession with fiction could be channeled like that and shared with other people, as well as deepening my writing. Online fandom has been a major part of my social life for over 20 years now, and I love the mix of getting excited about things with friends and also the creative outlet.

My corner of X-Files fandom in particular was just very calm and enjoyable for the most part, full of older professional women who were happy to be friends and give me advice about all kinds of things, and it really set the bar for me with my online interactions. Now I’m almost 40 and trying to be that person for my younger friends, as well as having no patience for toxicity and in-fighting in my fandom spaces.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

A combination of the creepy conspiracy angle and just adoring Scully. I remember how mysterious and fascinating the show seemed when I discovered it right before S5, and there was no way to find out more except to keep watching and hoping they explained. Scully was so smart and tough and beautiful and interesting, and as a teen I was just captivated by her (and the UST, though I didn’t care about Mulder as much).

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I ran across it a couple times early on but felt embarrassed by the concept, but then I read the first in Karen Rasch’s Words series and suddenly it clicked for me. After a while I started daydreaming my own conversations between them, very similar to what happens to me now when I’m getting into a new pairing, so after reading tons of recommended fic by big authors, I started writing my own (the 3-4 stories I posted in high school are all wiped from the internet now, though).

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Good memories, though because it was my senior year of high school and college, I know a lot of it is just tied to that time in my life, and also being in my very first fandom. I will rewatch episodes from time to time, but I basically never revisit former fandoms because they’re kind of like exes, even if I finished on a good note. I also think my taste in fic has changed (and there isn’t the same novelty of “characters I like getting together omg!”)

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

So many! None of them had quite the same combination of excellent central architecture (especially pre-AO3) and a really high level of discussion and friendliness without being enormous, but I’ve loved them all in their own ways. I’ve done fandom on LJ/DW, Tumblr, Discord, and now on Twitter, and I think I miss the mailing list days the most. You didn’t have to repeat yourself so much in multiple conversations, you weren’t character limited, and the discussion was all in one place, with personal stuff more confined to your side conversations. Discord is a little like that, but it moves too fast and there’s too much noise for my taste.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Heh, after X-Files I went through a whole phase of faves in the Scully vein — Buffy, Aeryn Sun, Kara Thrace, etc. Like many people I’ve shifted primarily into m/m in the last decade (Sherlock, YOI, and recently The Untamed have been my major fictional fandoms, along with a lot of sports RPF), but for non-fannish shows I’m always looking for awesome new female characters, like Elizabeth on the Americans, Peggy on Mad Men, Nadja on What We Do in the Shadows, etc. And I do LOVE Killing Eve and have written a little f/f over there.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I’ll rewatch favorite episodes occasionally, and I keep thinking about a full rewatch but it takes so much time! I never saw the second movie, and I didn’t finish the first of the new seasons because I was hating it, so it’s a little hard for me to think fannishly about them when I disliked basically everything after “Je Souhaite” so much (as far as I’m concerned the show ends there).

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

X-Files no, but yeah I’m still very active in fandoms.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I lost all my saved fic several computers ago, but I recall loving “Blue Christmas” by Plausible Deniability and “Diamonds and Rust” by MustangSally (obviously everything she wrote was great).

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Looking at my X-Files fic, I can’t believe how short it is and how comparatively little of it there is (I have lost track of a few ficlets). It felt like such a big deal to finish anything back then! I think my favorite remains Alphabetum, which involved a tricky structure and 5 elements given by people as part of the Scullyfic Improv challenge, where you had a week to write a story around those elements.

My favorite of my recent fic in fictional fandoms is probably the GoT/YOI crossover novel I wrote a couple years ago, for a completely opposite experience to this (and proof you can grow as a writer with a lot of effort!)

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

It’s honestly hard to imagine going back (like I said, I usually don’t), but I guess I could get inspired by something.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I certainly still write, and I do have to give credit to XF fandom and Scullyfic in particular for giving me the start I got, where I really wanted to be writing good fiction. The few things I wrote in high school were just me jamming out romantic cliches, but the people I was lucky to know in XF fandom showed me that “just” fanfic can still aspire to be high quality. I am a much, much better and more disciplined writer than I was back then, but I might never have started on this path without fandom friends encouraging me.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

Usually just daydreaming about emotional dynamics between characters/people, but sometimes something specific in canon or real life (I write a lot of RPF) gets me going, or maybe something I read.

What's the story behind your pen name?

When I wrote for X-Files, I picked “Sophia Jirafe” combining my favorite first name with a fancy spelling for my favorite animal (I was 18! Don’t judge!) Over on Livejournal, my friend Jintian and I initially shared an account with the same name as our website, double_helix, and when she got her own account I changed to sophia_helix, which is now sophiahelix just about everywhere. A little clunky, but I like the continuity (and I do run across old friends who remember the name).

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

The friends I’ve known for a very long time know about it, but we have never talked about it in depth. My husband, who I met not long after getting into fandom, also knows about it, and he’s encouraging and also a writer so we talk all the time. I told my mom in college and she was pretty dismissive, so we haven’t talked about it since (but my younger sister knows and is cool about it).

When I was younger, it was something I shared readily (I bonded with a new friend in law school I saw looking at LJ), but now I don’t really bring it up with new acquaintances.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I just made a Carrd the other day with all my various fannish addresses (Twitter, locked fannish Twitter, AO3, Tumblr)

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Just that it really was a high quality fandom — so much excellent long casefic, so many cool down to earth people, just generally a great launching place for a young fan. The friendships I made with older people were really important to me, and it makes me sad to see a lot of younger people now getting upset about the idea of anyone over a certain age being in their fandom spaces. I hope someday fandom can get back to appreciating that people of all ages can be the fandom type, and that everyone brings something different to the community.

(Posted by Lilydale on December 1, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #sophia jirafe

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phoenix-downer · 5 years

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The Keyblade Graveyard Part 1: Japanese and English Comparison

This is the fifth in a series of translation and analysis posts I’ve done about KH3. I’ll be talking about KH3 in the context of Westerns, briefly touch on a possible connection to jidaigeki, go into detail on camera angles and camera shots, and, of course, discuss translation and the social aspects of language.

I’ve broken up this analysis into multiple parts because it was getting so long. This part will cover Aqua and Ven’s interactions with Terranort, the next will cover when he attacks Lea and Kairi, and so on and so forth up through when the Demon Tide sweeps Sora away.

Here’s a general key for the kind of analysis I like to do:

JP: Official Japanese Dialogue

EN: Official English Dialogue

TR: My Translation (usually more literal and thus more stilted than the official English version. I’m not using natural-sounding English in order to stick as close to the Japanese versions of the lines as possible for the purpose of analysis)

Notes: things I found interesting, grammatical points, extra thoughts, etc.

One last note: media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every work of art must be viewed through the cultural lens of the people who made it. Kingdom Hearts, for all its ties to Disney, is still very much a Japanese game, so it should be analyzed in light of that.

With that in mind, let’s continue.

Terra’s introduction is like a cowboy in a Western with the dramatic smoke:

The cinematography of this whole scene strikes me as inspired by Westerns and/or Samurai cinema (chanbara, a subcategory of jidaigeki, or period films). The two genres of film have had a large influence on each other (Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven in the US, for example, and Akira Kurosawa was a fan of the American director John Ford), so this speculation might not be that far off.

This screenshot from the trailer for Seven Samurai, for example, shows a similar “dramatic smoke/dust” moment, which makes me think that this may be a trope in Samurai cinema as well:

The setting of the Keyblade Graveyard itself calls to mind the setting of a lot of Westerns, with its smoke and dust and craggy hills and desert. The conflict even takes place in a graveyard, much like the final standoff in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, one of the most famous Westerns of all time (technically a Spaghetti Western, or a Western made in Italy - in this case directed by Italian director Sergio Leone):

Anyway, continuing on. Terra is here, but he’s looking at the ground and not making eye contact with anyone:

Ven is the first to notice him, and he calls his name...

JP テラ！

EN Terra!

TR Terra!

...before taking off after to him, which stresses Aqua out (and rightfully so - can you blame her for being on edge about everyone’s safety here, especially Ven’s?):

JP ヴェン！

EN Ven!

TR Ven!

We get this wide shot of Ven running to Terra while he just sort of stands there:

There are a number of shots like this in the scene that really emphasize the scale of the conflict by showing how small the human players are compared to the setting.

This ties in well to the theme that the characters cannot change their fate - they’re just playthings of it. The Keyblade Graveyard will still be there long after they’re dead, much like how it is still here after all the people who fought in the Keyblade War died. And while Sora does later change fate, he has to face the consequences. Death claims its prize in the end.

Ven latches onto Terra’s wrist, and the camera focuses on their hands:

And then we get this over the shoulder shot that is also at a bit of a high angle to emphasize Ven’s vulnerability:

JP テラやっと会えた！

EN Terra! We found you!

TR Terra! We could meet at last!

Notes: The Japanese phrasing is a little different than the English version, but the same general meaning gets across. Ven is excited to see Terra again. His use of yatto implies it’s been a while, and he uses the potential form for meet, hence why I translated this as “could meet” despite how awkward it sounds in English.

We get this reverse over the shoulder shot from a lower angle to emphasize Terra’s greater size and strength compared to Ven:

Now, Aqua has Seen Things™ in the Realm of Darkness, and she is quick to ask if this is really the Terra they know and love. No doubt she has in mind the time they met in the Realm of Darkness and Xehanort took control of him:

JP テラ　本当にテラなの？

EN Terra, please say you’re in there.

TR Terra, is that really you? (Literally: Is [that] really Terra?)

Notes: Japanese tends to use names more than English does, whereas English favors the use of pronouns, hence why Aqua repeats Terra’s name twice in her question in the Japanese version.

She uses the ~nano construction to check for confirmation - she wants to believe this is Terra, but she has her doubts.

We get this extreme close up shot of Terra’s eyes to emphasize that while yes, they are blue, they seem a little empty and soulless:

Something I noticed about Kingdom Hearts 3 is that there are a lot of extreme close up shots like this, especially of the characters’ eyes.

Well, as I was doing some research for this analysis, it turns out this type of shot is also sometimes called an Italian shot, named for... you guessed it, Sergio Leone, who popularized it in his Spaghetti Western films.

Here’s an example of this type of shot from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

The emphasis of this type of shot is on the character’s emotions, and it serves to heighten the dramatic tension of the scene. Multiple times throughout the Keyblade Graveyard, we’ll get extreme close up shots like this that have just such an effect.

On a side note, I never noticed this many extreme close up shots in a Kingdom Hearts game before. I wonder if they hired new cutscene director(s) to work on the game who left their unique mark on it, or if the graphics capabilities of UE4 allowed them to experiment around with the cinematography more than they could in the past.

Continuing on, we see Aqua’s reaction to Terra’s soulless gaze:

She immediately moves to put herself between Ven and Terra, selfless to the end:

Ven sounds downright annoyed in the Japanese version and confused/questioning in the English version, but Aqua doesn’t care, she’s keeping him safe. Note how tense Sora is in the background:

JP 何だよアクア！

EN What gives, Aqua?

TR What(’s going on), Aqua?

Notes: Ven uses the emphatic particle yo in the Japanese version to show his annoyance with Aqua here - they’re finally all together again and yet she’s pushing him away from Terra? What gives?

The camera changes to this wide shot, once again emphasizing the epic scale of this very human conflict:

JP あなたの中にテラはいない

EN I know that you’re not him.

TR Terra isn’t inside of you.

Notes: Aqua knows the problem. Terra, or perhaps more specifically, Terra’s heart, is not inside of the body before them now. Aqua sounds angry and frustrated in her delivery in the Japanese version. She’s sick of this happening, sick of Terra still being lost to them.

Ven gasps in this next shot to indicate his surprise:

And Aqua sounds very angry/upset in the Japanese version as she commands Xehanort to release Terra. The camera angle is low again to show how Terra is towering over them, to hint at the power imbalance that we will soon see play out:

JP テラの体を返しなさい！

EN Now, let our friend go!

TR Return Terra’s body (to him)!

Notes: When Aqua was addressing Terra earlier, she used casual/intimate grammar forms. Japanese has an entire system of conjugation based on social dynamics - there are polite and casual forms of verbs, there are honorifics, humble expressions, rude expressions... all to express the relationship between the speaker and the addressee.

Aqua switches to a more polite form here. This could be because she wants to indicate social distance from Xehanort. It certainly isn’t used to be polite. This isn’t her friend; this is the man who ruined her friends’ lives as well as her own. She commands him to return Terra’s body using the honorific form nasai in a way that sounds like she’s scolding him. It’s possible she also chooses to use this particular command form as a mark of feminine speech, instead of using one of the coarser/more direct command forms at her disposal.

The camera tilts up, still at that low angle to emphasize Terra’s relative size and height advantage, and he (well, more like the heart inside of him) smirks:

We see his hair change color in a close up shot:

And then Ven’s horrified reaction. After all, he never knew what happened to Terra (as far as I can remember). The shot here really emphasizes his emotions by centering him in the frame head-on:

Fate of the Unknown has begun to play, very fitting for this scene, as Terra’s fate smacks Ven in the face (and the audience as well, for that matter). Note how everyone is ready for a fight, even if their Keyblades aren’t out yet. Knees bent, arms outstretched, or, in Goofy’s case, balled into fists:

Then we get this close up shot of Terranort’s face. His hair is fully silver and his eyes are yellow, and Mickey proclaims what has become of Terra:

JP これで１３人目ー

EN He is their thirteenth.

TR Here is (the) thirteenthー

Notes: Basically saying the same thing in both languages, just worded sligthly differently to sound more natural in English.

Dark smoke wafts off of Terranort as he finally speaks, and it’s not with Terra’s voice:

JP おまえたちはここで敗北する

EN Today is the day you all lose.

TR Here you all (will) lose.

Notes: Terranort uses the derogatory second person plural pronoun omaetachi to refer to them here. He also uses a casual form of the verb suru, indicating familiarity or, in this case, contempt. The word for “lose,” haiboku, can also mean “be defeated.”

Aqua sounds downright angry here in the Japanese version as she responds, and Ven just looks sad. The camera angle is a little off-kilter here (note how Aqua and Ven seem the same height even though they are not, and the characters in the background form a diagonal line): to indicate how “off” this whole situation is (I think this would be an example of a Dutch angle, but in case it’s not, I’ll call this kind of angle a tilted angle throughout this analysis):

JP 何を！

EN What?!

TR What!

Notes: I noticed the dialogue uses a lot of exclamation marks throughout this scene, both in the English version and the Japanese version. Emotions are running high, and all those exclamation marks really serve to show that.

Here we get a shot of Ven’s feet and Aqua’s legs...

...which is reminiscent of images and posters of famous show-downs in movies, like this one for the 1952 Western High Noon:

We even see this same sort of shot earlier in this scene, this time with Sora’s legs and Xehanort as the approaching opponent:

Once again, the framing of the shots calls to mind Westerns.

Moving on to the dialogue:

JP １３の闇にたどりつくこともなく　この場で心は肉体を離れ我が身を散らす

EN Before you even face the thirteen, every last one of you will be torn heart from body.

TR Without even reaching the thirteen darknesses, at this place (your) hearts will be separated from (your) bodies (and) I (will) scatter them (literally the bodies).

Notes: Terranort uses a different pronoun than Terra does. He uses ware, which Xehanort sometimes uses (and also sounds kind of old-fashioned), instead of the masculine pronoun ore, which is Terra’s pronoun of choice.

In the Japanese version, two different words are used for “body” here as well, nikutai in the first instance and mi in the second instance, perhaps for poetic effect and/or to avoid redundancy.

Next, he summons his weapon, which is accompanied by more darkness, and delivers this line:

JP だが安心しろ

EN But fear not.

TR But be at peace.

Notes: “Fear not” sounds a little archaic in English, as in modern English we would say “don’t be scared” or “don’t be afraid.” Over time main verbs lost the ability to move in front of negatives in English, and we insert “do” instead, which attaches to “not” to form “don’t,” while leaving the main verb in its spot.

Terranort’s use of an older construction in English like this is very effective at making him sound pompous. In modern English saying “fear not” brings up religious connotations, as a lot of well-known quotes from the Bible are based on older translations (hello, King James version) and thus older forms of the language. Terranort sounds like he’s playing at God, here, in other words. It also makes him sound older, which is fitting for an old man who stole the body of a young one.

In the Japanese version, he uses the command form of the verb suru, shiro, to command them to be at peace. This is a very direct way to command someone to do something, kind of coarse and not at all polite.

The camera cuts to this close up shot of his face:

JP χブレードはここで完成する

EN The χ-blade will still be forged.

TR The χ-blade will be completed here.

Notes: Basically saying the same thing in both languages. I like how the English version went with “forged,” though. Fitting for the whole “creating a weapon” thing.

We see, not Aqua and Ven’s reaction to Terranort’s proclamation, but everyone else’s, Sora’s in particular. He is centered in the frame here:

And then we get a closer shot of him to better showcase his reaction. His voice sounds lower here to indicate his determination:

JP おまえたちに負けることはない

EN We’re not gonna lose to you.

TR We’ll never lose to you.

Notes: Sora uses the derogatory second person plural pronoun here, omaetachi. He’s referring to their enemies as a whole as a whole, not just Terranort. Unfortunately this nuance is somewhat lost in English because we use “you” for both singular and plural second person, though regional varieties have popped up, such as y’all, you lot, you guys, youse guys, yinz, etc. to refer to plural “you.”

(For anyone wondering, yes, English did used to make this distinction in the past, much like many modern European languages still do. It was a sad day the English language lost its second person plural pronoun for various reasons that I won’t get into here, but those regional varieties I mentioned have popped up for a reason - it is really useful to be able to make that distinction between singular and plural!)

Sora uses the ~kotowanai construction here to indicate that they’ll never lose to Xehanort and his cronies. He’s absolutely sure of it. And the English version captures his casual style of speech with “gonna.”

The shot ends with him glaring at Terranort:

And the camera cuts to Terranort, making what I will call “the Xehanort look” from here on out:

We can see the Xehanort look exemplified by Xehanort himself here:

An eyebrow raised, head tilting forward, eyes looking up - a Kubrick stare to indicate he’s a little deranged.

An example of the Kubrick Stare for reference, from the film A Clockwork Orange. The Kubrick Stare was popularized by the director Stanley Kubrick for it showing up in a lot of his films:

That is a dramatic contrast from the types of faces Terra makes:

Using Xehanort’s expressions with Terra’s body makes it very clear Terra is not the one in control here, as to my knowledge Terra never makes the Xehanort look. It’s also very unsettling to see Terra acting like Xehanort. It just feels wrong, and that really comes through in how Terranort moves and reacts.

One moment, he’s there...

...and the next, he’s gone, indicated by a whooshing noise:

He can move lightning-fast, a fact the slow motion here in the next part obscures a little for dramatic effect. This has also lead to the impression that Aqua and Ven just stood there and did nothing. That’s not entirely true. It’s more like they didn’t have time to do much of anything.

Aqua does, in fact, react to his disappearance; you can hear her make a surprised noise here:

And then he suddenly reappears between her and Ven, indicated by another whooshing noise. Note Terranort’s posture, how he is bending his knee to gather as much momentum to hit Ven with as possible. The scene also goes into slow motion for dramatic effect:

And the camera cuts to him swinging his blade and speeds up a little:

Again, Aqua barely has time to register that Terranort has moved because he’s moving so quickly. Ven is in shock because he would never imagine Terra hurting him. They didn’t have much time to launch any sort of a defense, and while I think Aqua expected Terranort to attack her, perhaps, neither she nor Ven expected Terranort to attack Ven.

Because Ven is like their younger brother, or even their son. In the Japanese version of BBS he downright said he was supposed to bring his parents to Disney Town when he gave Terra and Aqua the passes, not just grownups like the English version went with. And while Aqua and Terranort have fought before, Terra has never laid a hand on Ven. Not as Terra, not as Terranort. Ven trusts him to keep him safe, to protect him. So for Terranort to attack him, well...

It’s kind of like watching a father attack his own son as his wife watches on in horror at what’s unfolding.

The scene goes back into slow-mo as Terranort’s Keyblade connects with Ven, and Ven is folded over from the impact, Terranort hit him so hard. He makes a choked sound of pain, too, like he’s had the wind knocked out of him and can hardly breathe. Note how Aqua isn’t looking in their direction yet because she hasn’t had time to look yet:

We cut to a closer shot of Ven that puts the focus on him as he reacts, and you can see the pain written all over his face:

The scene is still in slow motion as he hurtles backwards:

And then the camera cuts to Aqua to show her reaction. She slowly turns her head (still in slow-mo, remember?), and the look of shock and horror on her face is heartbreaking to see:

The camera speeds up to normal speeds as it shows Ven being flung backwards, as if this is from Terranort’s POV:

Note how Ven’s eyes are still open, he still seems to be conscious:

And then the camera cuts to a different perspective behind the characters, as if the camera is on the ground. Note how once again the ground is at an angle instead of forming a straight line in this shot to indicate how wrong this whole situation is. We can also see Ven landing on his back with his legs in the air...

...which provides enough momentum for him to tumble backwards:

His body settles on the ground in a cloud of dust, and he no longer seems to be conscious. Note his limp head:

My guess is that landing on his back like that/hitting his head is what made him lose consciousness, as he was conscious before when he was still in the air. Terranort wasn’t necessarily trying to kill him (though I’d argue hitting your head like that would probably be enough to kill you in real life if not in video games), he was just trying to incapacitate him so it would make it easier to take his heart out of his body later on.

Riku provides credence to this theory later on when he tells Sora that the hearts of their friends are still in their bodies. If Ven had died here, that probably wouldn’t be the case.

The camera cuts to Terranort, and he has a downright smug expression on his face over what he just did. The Xehanort look is back in full force:

And it makes for quite the contrast with Aqua’s look of shock and disbelief as she gasps:

We get a shot from her POV, showing Ven crumpled on the ground:

And then a close up shot of her reaction to what has happened to Ven that showcases her emotions, her feelings. This moment is framed in terms of her pain and loss and shock, showing that we as the audience are supposed to empathize with her:

We get a closer shot of Ven that fills the frame, and Ven isn’t conscious:

And Aqua has processed everything enough to finally be able to speak:

She calls Ven’s name in a downright panicked manner and leans forward as she does:

JP ヴェン！

EN Ven!

TR Ven!

To be continued...

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leavyes-a · 4 years

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meta on media consumption as beholding, and the creation of the conservator role, based on conversations with @hdtvtits. content warning, as always, for addiction, compulsive / obsessive behavior, aggressive hoarding, and implied terminal illness, all of the eldritch variety. also allusions to real-life hollywood dramas, though nothing remotely specific is discussed in this post.

foreword: this is just the first part of a bunch of meta i’ll likely end up posting on why levi is what they are and why their beholding manifests the way it does, because like... for secrets and the underbelly of film production i have a lot to say but a lot to source as well. but there are a few things i want to address in this post, namely: what the eye feeds off of, whether or not levi is feeding the eye in their media consumption ( and how ), and how it ultimately serves the eye’s purposes to have this be levi’s method of feeding. this probably won’t even be my last post on the subject as i keep sort of logicking out the way that beholding works and how it can manifest. it’s important to me though that it exist and function outside of just what happens in the institute ( which is proven in the statements ), mostly because fear entities are global and primal and jonny said that the story really is britain-centric. now, media consumption isn’t particularly groundbreaking; it addresses a more american culture, but that’s still western-centric and sort of ‘typical’ of europe and america, though i will say that european filmmaking as an institution is... different. it has its own history and quirks. hollywood is its own beast. someday i’ll make a post on levi’s judaism and how that interacts with beholding and manifests as more than their aesthetic, because they haven’t even used their ayin hara on this blog yet though it’s a ( minor ) power they possess, but that deserves its own post. ANYWAYS. with that said.

what does the eye feed off of? the eye doesn’t just function based off a primal fear, it has a drive that it imbues its servants with: “it is the manifestation of the fear of being watched, exposed, followed, of having secrets known, but also the drive to know and understand, even if your discoveries might destroy you.” i think that most of the entities function in a similar way, with the things they inspire and feed off of on the one hand, and avatars with a desire to evoke that fear in the other; i.e., avatars create food to feed their entity, and if they don’t, the entity devours them instead. that’s pretty basic knowledge. ( i also have stuff to say about entities consuming themselves because every time claire says autocannibalism i go absolutely hog wild about it but that’s for another day. ) there are, then, multiple ways that an avatar can go about gathering fear for its entity, but what sets the eye apart from others, i believe, is that it doesn’t need to directly cause the fear it consumes -- though i think that it finds the fear of being watched more filling than just watching other people be afraid, it can still ‘survive’ off of that. this is where eye shit starts to get confusing and it’s why these posts are so longwinded and involve me talking myself in circles, because the eye both has a specific fear that it’s linked to and can devour other people’s experiences of fear that it did not cause, yes even before the apocalypse. that’s just how jon feeds for the majority of the series. for a good long while, he’s not going out and getting statements himself; and even when he does, he’s double dipping on both the fear they convey to him about their experiences ( knowledge gained ) and the fear that this man is pulling information out of them ( secrets exposed ).

but that’s jon and we’re not talking about jon, we’re talking about levi, and my ever-evolving thesis on voyeurism in / and media.

so what does an eye avatar need to do, exactly, to eat? it needs to accumulate knowledge, that’s the baseline that it can survive off of -- knowledge of the other entities is best, but i don’t know that it’s a requirement... and i don’t know if it’s not! i am going to make the call that eye avatars can survive off of just hoarding information because the eye isn’t super picky and wants to know everything anyways, but not feeding off of fear for a long time is going to leave the avatar really weak. and for an eye avatar to develop its powers and grow, it needs to take statements directly, or else give other people the distinct feeling of being observed against their will. the more people it feeds off of as a result of its own actions, the more powerful it becomes. that said, i don’t think this is common, which is why watchers ( heads of institutes ) have set up these systems where they’re generating food for themselves on two axes simultaneously: fear of people who give statements, and fear of people who have to work at their institutes ( either taking statements or working directly under the eye ). that just sort of accumulates power upwards within eye bureaucracies, though the archivists who take and sort the statements are also going to become remarkably powerful if they lean into their role.

( also side note: these systems work for the english, american, and chinese institutes, but there are ways for beholding avatars to thrive outside of them, and again someday i’m going to post about oral traditions and the ability to craft stories in different regions of beholding that feed the eye. but i need to do research first and we’re talking about levi! )

here’s the thing... levi is not an archivist. levi is not powerful. levi does not have a strong connection to beholding. they worship it, but fanaticism does not equal feeding, sadly, and the role they’ve been given is not one that pushes them to go and gather statements for themselves. they have taken read and statements at afi, because wyatt was raising them into an avatar, but, though conservators and archivists can overlap in the real world, they ( in my word of god for this blog’s canon and the monster i made up ) are two very different things under the eye. essentially, conservators serve archivists ( and watchers ) by witnessing, recording, and playing back statements that archivists can then maneuver through. the more experienced the conservator, the more they can shift the camera, allowing the archivist to comb through statements in detail and pull the knowledge that they want from them. remember that the beholding grants knowledge, not understanding, and while that may be fine for the eye, sometimes its ‘human’ servants need to put the pieces together in order to advance its plans.

the conservator is a relatively new position within beholding, because it does function like a film camera. i think that, in other times, places, and cultures, there were similar avatars who filled a similar role, but it wasn’t the same. the conservator really is a miskatonic / american experiment to help the institute delve into the information it already possessed. for one example of how conservators are useful, consider what happened with sasha: the archivist had his voice recordings of her, because it can’t effect magnetic tape, but jon the person still had her wiped completely from his memory. that wouldn’t happen to a conservator, because all of their memories are converted into (meta)physical tape stock. they are a lockbox that cannot be opened or altered unless you’re a more powerful beholding avatar. ( the limitation here is that they only have so much storage space, they will need to expunge some memories to store more; though those memories can be kept in physical containers, film stock obviously degrades and is a very unstable and extremely flammable medium; their body will also internally decompose to make room for more data and that is a painful process that eventually renders the conservator just a storage without any ability to function beyond sitting still and replaying witnessed / read events. )

we’ve established that levi feeds normally. they take statements, they are present in an archive, they’re hearing the scary stories. finally, finally on to why levi consumes media and how levi consumes media, because the one is intrinsically linked to the other. let me start by saying that just watching television or films does not a beholding avatar make. yes you are watching, but the distinction is in whether you are passively or actively viewing. and the power that is drawn from someone zoning out and being addicted to passively consuming media does not go to the eye. that is neither a fear of being observed ( for the one watching or for the actors / writers, because nobody is going to care about an audience that doesn’t form an opinion at all beyond basic emotional reactions; uncritical consumers are milk and honey to them ) nor a pursuit of knowledge ( passively accepting knowledge is, according to elias, far less effective in raising up eye avatars than letting them learn to ‘see’ on their own ). all that power goes to mx media ( @hdtvtits ) or, if you don’t like crossovers, Just Definitely Not the Eye. it’s when you start performing analysis that the eye takes interest -- which is why the eye continues to thrive in academia ( au where i write meta on just how bad that gets, historically, but again there are things we don’t get into until we research thoroughly ). the more you lose yourself in compiling information, to the exclusion of everything else, the more you appeal to beholding. and when you start unveiling secrets, which there are plenty of in film and film production, things kept private from the audience, ‘movie magic’, then feeding can begin.

this may come as a surprise, but levi does not have a response to whether or not they ‘like’ movies. if you ask them, ‘did you enjoy that movie?’ they will not say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, they will just start launching into ripping it apart. levi probably started out enjoying movies recreationally, but at some point, they became not just unwilling to but incapable of watching films without analyzing -- and what separates this from normal people who are conscientious and engaged viewers is that this is a mania that spans hours. their ‘digestion’ of a film is obsessive and has a physical component because it is eldritch in nature. i can’t stress enough that levi isn’t just a pretentious film buff who says ‘oh i can’t consume media for pleasure or uncritically’, though they may have been at some point in their college career! they have a physical and metaphysical makeup that drives them to frenzy over what they watch. the instant they finish a film, they’ll begin a rapid accumulation of knowledge of anything they can dig up: the who, what, when, where, why, how. if they do have an emotional response, it’s incredibly removed, and their way of processing it is to drill into how and why the film made them feel that way.

if they try to avoid this step in the process -- if they just watch a movie, turn it off, and attempt to go to bed -- they will start to weaken immediately. watching the movie isn’t enough for feeding. if it was, the eye wouldn’t take any interest at all. it’s the genuinely out-of-control driving impulse to keep researching and researching until there is nothing left about a piece of media that isn’t known, shredding through academic papers and script drafts and director’s notes and interviews and everything they can get their hands on, that stems from and feeds beholding. they do not settle for what is put on the screen. they will even cold call creators in a fit and try to get them to talk about the production ( which is, yes, invasive -- beholding is an eldritch entity, it is not healthy or good and does not inspire healthy or good habits! ).

they may not even be capable of enjoying a piece on its own merits; it’s all about the world it opens up to them, it’s about stuffing themselves with information until they can’t breathe and overstimulate and pass out. then recovery from that can take days as they process what they learned and sort it all out in their mind. they don’t really do much with this information; just knowing it is enough. if an archivist or watcher wants to take action about it, they can ask levi to spit it back up for them. but ultimately, despite the impact that this has on their health, this is still low-level feeding for a low-level avatar. unless it’s a truly gruesome movie or has an exceptionally shady production background, it’s not really the fear that the eye is looking for. levi is feeding one half of beholding, the half that wants them to consume knowledge and secrets. if levi didn’t take / read statements as well, or go out and witness live horrific events, they would probably starve -- their body would eat itself processing knowledge.

and i will talk about the component of parasocial relationships, anxiety that stems from being an actor / director / content creator in general and having your work and your image spiral out of control as it’s ripped apart and dissected by consumers, because that is beholding territory as well. it’s just not actually what levi does, but because it relates to the media-beholding relationship, i’ll have it on this blog.

#➢ photoplay expresses the action of the mind! ( headcanon. )

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conchstyle · 4 years

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Bittersweet: A Taste of Reality

by: Pleshae Abria McPhee

"If when you think about the content you’re brainstorming , if it doesn’t strike fear in you and have you questioning: "How am I gonna pull this off, it’s probably not big enough." Tackle things you think are bigger than you."

-Raychard Ferguson

Raychard Ferguson, 22, is a Bahamian native and recent graduate of Saint Leo University in Dade, City Florida. He has left the pride this Spring 2020, but his paw prints are still pressed into the lions' den and the legacy of his university. He has etched his mark with his recently released biographical documentary film entitled "Bittersweet" that he wrote, directed, filmed, edited and promoted. The film is centered around his "bittersweet" struggle as a senior, his journey throughout university, and his roller coaster of a ride with obtaining his current multimedia internship.

Raychard has had a passion for film and editing from his childhood and specifically around the 9th grade and has always enjoyed watching movies. His love for multimedia management started out with photography but he soon found a liking to cinematography as time went on. He has pursued his bachelor's degree in Multimedia Management and currently holds an internship in Tampa, Florida.

He notes that the trials of senior year fueled his inspiration for the "Bittersweet" film with inspiration from Kanye West, an American rapper, writer, and producer. "I had a rough time grasping that it was my senior year and although my grades were always right, I had no real world experience in the film industry. Kanye West's early albums always seemed to be the soundtrack of whatever I was going through. So if it was an inspiration, it would be his work." Ferguson explained.

Ferguson also noted that the ups and downs of senior year are always reduced to one single moment in time- the end- but he wanted to show the whole story, the true story. "The way I saw the situation was like an iceberg. Most of it is under the water but people only get to see a small glimpse of it at the top. I wanted to create something that showed the entire iceberg. " he said.

He shared that the filming process was done during his regular semester schedule, therefore he was tasked with school work and producing the film. "Due to me producing this during the regular semester schedule, it was a consistent time schedule. But pre-production was estimated around 5 Hours and post production ( if time was clocked consistently) would be 2 weeks."

The film has been and continues to be a massive success across all social media platforms such as Instagram TV, and Facebook video, but Ferguson admitted that here were some conflicts down the road. "Challenges definitely were scheduling and having multiple positions on various sets. Having to be the director , first AD , and manning 2 cameras were a task but had to get it done." he explained.

He says that in the future he wants to continue doing what he loves and he enjoys what he does, and that in God's time, he will see his goals become a reality. "I see myself doing what I love. Being a film director is fun. Making a profit from it is just a plus. And that’s the formula for happiness in my opinion. Making a hobby my career aspirations. As much as I want my goals to happen on my time, (which would obviously be right now) , I know it’s God speed."

Ferguson's parting advice to aspiring film directors, editors, or cinematographers are that you can think with a broad mind in the industry and that there is no narrow road. "You don’t necessarily have to find a niche. You don’t have to go directly into film. This is an expensive field to get into. Your capitol might not necessarily come from your actual passion. Use other skills to fund your love if need be."

Watch Bittersweet Part 1: “Bad News” here!

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blackfreethinkers · 5 years

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Two kindergartners in Utah told a Latino boy that President Trump would send him back to Mexico, and teenagers in Maine sneered "Ban Muslims" at a classmate wearing a hijab. In Tennessee, a group of middle-schoolers linked arms, imitating the president's proposed border wall as they refused to let nonwhite students pass. In Ohio, another group of middle-schoolers surrounded a mixed-race sixth-grader and, as she confided to her mother, told the girl: "This is Trump country."

Since Trump's rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.

Trump’s words, those chanted by his followers at campaign rallies and even his last name have been wielded by students and school staff members to harass children more than 300 times since the start of 2016, a Washington Post review of 28,000 news stories found. At least three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic, black or Muslim, according to the analysis. Students have also been victimized because they support the president — more than 45 times during the same period.

Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that Trump-connected persecution of children has never stopped. Even without the huge total from November 2016, an average of nearly two incidents per school week have been publicly reported over the past four years. Still, because so much of the bullying never appears in the news, The Post’s figure represents a small fraction of the actual total. It also doesn’t include the thousands of slurs, swastikas and racial epithets that aren’t directly linked to Trump but that the president’s detractors argue his behavior has exacerbated.

“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected,” said Ashanty Bonilla, 17, a Mexican American high school junior in Idaho who faced so much ridicule from classmates last year that she transferred. “They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

Asked about Trump’s effect on student behavior, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham noted that first lady Melania Trump — whose “Be Best” campaign denounces online harassment — had encouraged kids worldwide to treat one another with respect.

First lady Melania Trump speaks at the White House in May 2018 about her “Be Best” campaign, which denounces online harassment. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

“She knows that bullying is a universal problem for children that will be difficult to stop in its entirety,” Grisham wrote in an email, “but Mrs. Trump will continue her work on behalf of the next generation despite the media’s appetite to blame her for actions and situations outside of her control.”

Most schools don’t track the Trump bullying phenomenon, and researchers didn’t ask about it in a federal survey of 6,100 students in 2017, the most recent year with available data. One in five of those children, ages 12 to 18, reported being bullied at school, a rate unchanged since the previous count in 2015.

However, a 2016 online survey of over 10,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that more than 2,500 “described specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric,” although the overwhelming majority never made the news. In 476 cases, offenders used the phrase “build the wall.” In 672, they mentioned deportation.

Withrow University High School

Someone sprayed hateful graffiti across campus, declaring "F- - - N-words and Faggots" and "Trump." The graffiti also threatened gay and black students and featured multiple swastikas -- the latter often painted alongside the president's last name.

Lewiston High School

After Ashanty Bonilla, 17, tweeted criticism of Trump supporters who visit Mexico, a classmate posted her message on Snapchat alongside a racist response and a Confederate flag. The next day, classmates heckled the teen with racist jeers, tied a rope to the back of her car and wrote "Republican Trump 2020" on the back window.

Amon Carter-Riverside High School

Georgia Clark, an English teacher in Fort Worth, tweeted at President Trump asking him to remove undocumented immigrants from her high school. She mistakenly believed her messages were private.

For Cielo Castor, who is Mexican American, the experience at Kamiakin High in Kennewick, Wash., was searing. The day after the election, a friend told Cielo, then a sophomore, that he was glad Trump won because Mexicans were stealing American jobs. A year later, when the president was mentioned during her American literature course, she said she didn't support him and a classmate who did refused to sit next to her. “‘I don’t want to be around her,’ ” Cielo recalled him announcing as he opted for the floor instead. Then, on “America night” at a football game in October 2018 during Cielo’s senior year, schoolmates in the student section unfurled a “Make America Great Again” flag. Led by the boy who wouldn’t sit beside Cielo, the teenagers began to chant: “Build — the — wall!” Horrified, she confronted the instigator. “You can’t be doing that,” Cielo told him. He ignored her, she recalled, and the teenagers around him booed her. A cheerleading coach was the lone adult who tried to make them stop. “I felt like I was personally attacked. And it wasn’t like they were attacking my character. They were attacking my ethnicity, and it’s not like I can do anything about that.”

— Cielo Castor

After a photo of the teenagers with the flag appeared on social media, news about what had happened infuriated many of the school’s Latinos, who made up about a quarter of the 1,700-member student body. Cielo, then 17, hoped school officials would address the tension. When they didn’t, she attended that Wednesday’s school board meeting. “I don’t feel cared for,” she told the members, crying. A day later, the superintendent consoled her and the principal asked how he could help, recalled Cielo, now a college freshman. Afterward, school staff members addressed every class, but Hispanic students were still so angry that they organized a walkout. Some students heckled the protesters, waving MAGA caps at them. At the end of the day, Cielo left the school with a white friend who’d attended the protest; they passed an underclassman she didn’t know. “Look,” the boy said, “it’s one of those f---ing Mexicans.” She heard that school administrators — who declined to be interviewed for this article — suspended the teenager who had led the chant, but she doubts he has changed. Reached on Instagram, the teenager refused to talk about what happened, writing in a message that he didn’t want to discuss the incident “because it is in the past and everyone has moved on from it.” At the end, he added a sign-off: “Trump 2020.”

President Trump’s rhetoric has been condemned as racist and xenophobic since his candidacy began in 2015. Here is what he’s said. (The Washington Post)

Just as the president has repeatedly targeted Latinos, so, too, have school bullies. Of the incidents The Post tallied, half targeted Hispanics.

In one of the most extreme cases of abuse, a 13-year-old in New Jersey told a Mexican American schoolmate, who was 12, that “all Mexicans should go back behind the wall.” A day later, on June 19, 2019, the 13-year-old assaulted the boy and his mother, Beronica Ruiz, punching him and beating her unconscious, said the family’s attorney, Daniel Santiago. He wonders to what extent Trump’s repeated vilification of certain minorities played a role.

More than 300 Trump-inspired harassment incidents reported by news outlets from 2016-2019

Anti-Hispanic: 45%

Anti-black: 23%

Anti-Semitic: 7%

Anti-Muslim: 8%

Anti-LGBT: 4%

Anti-Trump: 14%

Note: Some incidents targeted multiple groups and, in other cases, the ethnicity/gender/religion of the intended target was unclear. Figures may not precisely add up because of rounding.

“When the president goes on TV and is saying things like Mexicans are rapists, Mexicans are criminals — these children don’t have the cognitive ability to say, ‘He’s just playing the role of a politician,’ ” Santiago argued. “The language that he’s using matters.” Ruiz’s son, who is now seeing a therapist, continues to endure nightmares from an experience that may take years to overcome. But experts say that discriminatory language can, on its own, harm children, especially those of color who may already feel marginalized. “It causes grave damage, as much physical as psychological,” said Elsa Barajas, who has counseled more than 1,000 children in her job at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health. As a result, she has seen Hispanic students suffer from sleeplessness, lose interest in school, and experience inexplicable stomach pain and headaches.

For Ashanty Bonilla, the damage began with the response to a single tweet she shared 10 months ago. “Unpopular opinion,” Ashanty, then 16 and a sophomore at Lewiston High School in rural Idaho, wrote on April 9. “People who support Trump and go to Mexico for vacation really piss me off. Sorry not sorry.” Some of Ashanty Bonilla’s classmates at Lewiston High in rural Idaho harassed her last April after she tweeted a comment critical of Trump supporters. (Rajah Bose/For The Washington Post) A schoolmate, who is white, took a screen shot of her tweet and posted it to Snapchat, along with a Confederate flag. “Unpopular opinion but: people that are from Mexico and come in to America illegally or at all really piss me off,” he added in a message that spread rapidly among students. The next morning, as Ashanty arrived at school, half a dozen boys, including the one who had written the message, stood nearby. “You’re illegal. Go back to Mexico,” she heard one of them say. “F--- Mexicans.” Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up. In a 33,000-person town that is 94 percent white, Ashanty, whose father is half-black and whose mother is Mexican American, had always worked to fit in. She attended every football game and won a school spirit award as a freshman. She straightened her hair and dyed it blond, hoping to look more like her friends. “It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected. They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

— Ashanty Bonilla

She had known those boys who’d heckled her since they were little. For her 15th birthday the year before, some had danced at her quinceañera. A friend drove her off campus for lunch, but when they pulled back into the parking lot, Ashanty spotted people standing around her car. A rope had been tied from the back of the Honda Pilot to a pickup truck. “Republican Trump 2020,” someone had written in the dust on her back window. Hands trembling, Ashanty tried to untie the rope but couldn’t. She heard the laughing, sensed the cellphone cameras pointed at her. She began to weep. Lewiston’s principal, Kevin Driskill, said he and his staff met with the boys they knew were involved, making clear that “we have zero tolerance for any kind of actions like that.” The incidents, he suspected, stemmed mostly from ignorance. “Our lack of diversity probably comes with a lack of understanding,” Driskill said, but he added that he’s encouraged by the school district’s recent creation of a community group — following racist incidents on other campuses — meant to address those issues. That effort came too late for Ashanty. Some friends supported her, but others told her the boys were just joking. Don’t ruin their lives. She seldom attended classes the last month of school. That summer, she started having migraines and panic attacks. In August, amid her spiraling despair, Ashanty swallowed 27 pills from a bottle of antidepressants. A helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Spokane, Wash., 100 miles away. After that, she began seeing a therapist and, along with the friend who defended her, transferred to another school. Sometimes, she imagines how different life might be had she never written that tweet, but Ashanty tries not to blame herself and has learned to take more pride in her heritage. She just wishes the president understood the harm his words inflict. Even Trump’s last name has become something of a slur to many children of color, whether they’ve heard it shouted at them in hallways or, in her case, seen it written on the back window of a car. “It means,” she said, “you don’t belong.”

Georgia Clark taught English at Amon Carter-Riverside High School in Fort Worth, where a student accused her of racism. (Allison V. Smith/For The Washington Post) Three weeks into the 2018-19 school year, Miracle Slover's English teacher, she alleges, ordered black and Hispanic students to sit in the back of the classroom at their Fort Worth high school. At the time, Miracle was a junior. Georgia Clark, her teacher at Amon Carter-Riverside, often brought up Trump, Miracle said. He was a good person, she told the class, because he wanted to build a wall. “Every day was something new with immigration,” said Miracle, now 18, who has a black mother and a mixed-race father. “That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.” Some students tried to film Clark, and others complained to administrators, but none of it made a difference, Miracle said. Clark, an employee of the Fort Worth system since 1998, kept talking. Clark, who denies the teenager’s allegations, is one of more than 30 educators across the country accused of using the president’s name or rhetoric to harass students since he announced his candidacy, the Post analysis found. In Clark’s class, Miracle stayed quiet until late spring 2019. That day, she walked in wearing her hair “puffy,” split into two high buns. Clark, she said, told her it looked “nappy, like Marge off ‘The Simpsons.’ ” Unable to smother an angry reply, Miracle landed in the principal’s office. An administrator asked her to write a witness statement, and in it, she finally let go, scrawling her frustration across seven pages. “I just got tired of it,” she said. “I wrote a ton.” Still, Miracle said, school officials took no action until six weeks later, when Clark, 69, tweeted at Trump — in what she thought were private messages — requesting help deporting undocumented immigrants in Fort Worth schools. The posts went viral, drawing national condemnation. Clark was fired. “Every day was something new with immigration. That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.”

— Miracle Slover, referring to Georgia Clark, her former English teacher

Not always, though, are offenders removed from the classroom. The day after the 2016 election, Donnie Jones Jr.’s daughter was walking down a hallway at her Florida high school when, she says, a teacher warned her and two friends — all sophomores, all black — that Trump would “send you back to Africa.” The district suspended the teacher for three days and transferred him to another school. Just a few days later in California, a physical education teacher told a student that he would be deported under Trump. Two years ago in Maine, a substitute teacher referenced the president’s wall and promised a Lebanese American student, “You’re getting kicked out of my country.” More than a year later in Texas, a school employee flashed a coin bearing the word “ICE” at a Hispanic student. “Trump,” he said, “is working on a law where he can deport you.” Sometimes, Jones said, he doesn’t recognize America. “People now will say stuff that a couple of years ago they would not dare say,” Jones argued. He fears what his two youngest children, ages 11 and 9, might hear in their school hallways, especially if Trump is reelected. Now a senior, Miracle doesn’t regret what she wrote about Clark. Although the furor that followed forced Miracle to switch schools and quit her beloved dance team, she would do it again, she said. Clark’s punishment, her public disgrace, was worth it. About a week before Miracle’s 18th birthday, her mother checked Facebook to find a flurry of notifications. Friends were messaging to say that Clark had appealed her firing, and that the Texas education commissioner had intervened. Reluctant to spoil the birthday, Jowona Powell waited several days to tell her daughter, who doesn’t use social media. Citing a minor misstep in the school board’s firing process, the commissioner had ordered Carter-Riverside to pay Clark one year’s salary — or give the former teacher her job back.

A snapshot of the harassment in 2019

In the three months after the president tweeted on July 14, 2019, that four minority congresswomen should "go back” to the countries they came from, more than a dozen incidents of Trump-related school bullying — including several that used his exact language — were reported in the press.

Mahtomedi High School & Como Park Senior High School

During a soccer game, students taunted a majority Asian-American team (which also included at least one Hispanic player) by telling them to go back to their countries and calling them "Asian food names."

Baldwin High School & Piper High School

During a volleyball game, students told black players on the court to go back to where they came from and made monkey noises at them.

Barack and Michelle Obama Ninth Grade Center

After a 14-year-old failed to address a staffer with "Yes, sir," the man showed the student a coin with "ICE" written on it and said, "Even though you are a citizen, Trump is working on a law where he can deport you, too, because of your mom’s status." The man later lost his job.

Everett Alvarez High School

Frontier High School

Students waving "Make America Great Again" flags disrupted a meeting of the school's Gay Straight Alliance, breaking up the gathering by shouting slurs before following the group's members to the parking lot.

Edward Little High School

Students yelled "Build the wall!" and "Ban Muslims!" as a 16-year-old Muslim girl walked through the hallways.

A 16-year-old student was arrested after posting on social media -- shortly after the deadly mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso — a photo of a pickup displaying a Trump flag, a Confederate flag and several guns. He captioned the post, "west harrison ain't ready for round 2."

Fans told one Hispanic player on the opposing team to “go back to your country” and called others “f---ing beaner” and "wetback" during a soccer game.

During a game in which a student was accused of using a racial slur againt a black player, fans also waved a Trump sign and chanted "America" when their team scored.

Cheerleaders from a largely white school held up a sign that read "Make America Great Again" and "Trump the Leopards" before a football game against a much more diverse school.

Before a football game, players ran through a banner reading "Make America Great Again Trump Those Patriots," triggering a backlash.

At least two minority students were bullied — in separate incidents — because the district allowed students to display a Trump banner at a high school football game, according to parents and school board members.

After students painted the school rock with rainbows to celebrate National Coming Out Day, someone painted over it with "Trump 2020," "MAGA 2020," "NRA" and an expletive. Later, two students — one black, one white — got into a fight about the issue.

During a volleyball game, students told black players on the court to go back to where they came from and made monkey noises at them.

In an apparent prank against a schoolmate, students created a fake Twitter account — which praised Adolf Hitler and Trump in its bio — and tweeted out racist remarks against a black high school coach. Jordyn Covington stood when she heard the jeers. “Monkeys!” “You don’t belong here.” “Go back to where you came from!” From atop the bleachers that day in October, Jordyn, 15, could see her Piper High School volleyball teammates on the court in tears. The sobbing varsity players were all black, all from Kansas City, Kan., like her. Who was yelling? Jordyn wondered. She peered at the students in the opposing section. Most of them were white. “It was just sad,” said Jordyn, who plays for Piper’s junior varsity team. “And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.” Go back? To where? Jordyn, her friends and Piper’s nine black players were all born in the United States. “Just like everyone else,” Jordyn said. “Just like white people.” “It was just sad. And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.” The game, played at an overwhelmingly white rural high school, came three months after Trump tweeted that four minority congresswomen should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” It was Jordyn’s first experience with racism, she said. But it was not the first time that fans at a school sports game had used the president to target students of color.

The Post found that players, parents or fans have used his name or words in at least 48 publicly reported cases, hurling hateful slogans at students competing in elementary, middle and high school games in 26 states. The venom has been shouted on football gridirons and soccer fields, on basketball and volleyball courts. Nearly 90 percent of incidents identified by The Post targeted players and fans of color, or teams fielded by schools with large minority populations. More than half focused on Hispanics.

In one of the earliest examples, students at a Wisconsin high school soccer game in April 2016 chanted “Trump, build a wall!” at black and Hispanic players. A few months later, students at a high school basketball game in Missouri turned their backs and hoisted a Trump/Pence campaign sign as the majority-black opposing team walked onto the court. In 2017, two high school girls in Alabama showed up at a football game pep rally with a sign reading “Put the Panic back in Hispanic” and a “Trump Make America Great Again” banner. In late 2017, two radio hosts announcing a high school basketball game in Iowa were caught on a hot mic describing Hispanic players as “español people.” “As Trump would say,” one broadcaster suggested, “go back where they came from.” Both announcers were fired. After the volleyball incident in Kansas, though, the fallout was more muted. The opposing school district, Baldwin City, commissioned an investigation and subsequently asserted that there was “no evidence” of racist jeers. Administrators from Piper’s school system dismissed that claim and countered with a statement supporting their students. An hour after the game, Jordyn fought to keep her eyes dry as she boarded the team bus home. When white players insisted that everything would be okay, she slipped in ear buds and selected “my mood playlist,” a collection of somber nighttime songs. She wiped her cheeks. Jordyn had long ago concluded that Trump didn’t want her — or “anyone who is just not white” — in the United States. But hearing other students shout it was different. Days later, her English teacher assigned an essay asking about “what’s right and what’s wrong.” At first, Jordyn thought she might write about the challenges transgender people face. Then she had another idea. “The students were making fun of us because we were different, like our hair and skin tone,” Jordyn wrote. “How are you gonna be mad at me and my friends for being black. . . . I love myself and so should all of you.” She read it aloud to the class. She finished, then looked up. Everyone began to applaud.

It's not just young Trump supporters who torment classmates because of who they are or what they believe. As one boy in North Carolina has come to understand, kids who oppose the president — kids like him — can be just as vicious. By Gavin Trump’s estimation, nearly everyone at his middle school in Chapel Hill comes from a Democratic family. So when the kids insist on calling him by his last name — even after he demands that they stop — the 13-year-old knows they want to provoke him, by trying to link the boy to the president they despise. In fifth grade, classmates would ask if he was related to the president, knowing he wasn’t. They would insinuate that Gavin agreed with the president on immigration and other polarizing issues. “They saw my last name as Trump, and we all hate Trump, so it was like, ‘We all hate you,’ ” he said. “I was like, ‘Why are you teasing me? I have no relationship to Trump at all. We just ended up with the same last name.’ ” Beyond kids like Gavin, the Post analysis also identified dozens of children across the country who were bullied, or even assaulted, because of their allegiance to the president. School staff members in at least 18 states, from Washington to West Virginia, have picked on students for wearing Trump gear or voicing support for him. Among teenagers, the confrontations have at times turned physical. A high school student in Northern California said that after she celebrated the 2016 election results on social media, a classmate accused her of hating Mexicans and attacked her, leaving the girl with a bloodied nose. Last February, a teenager at an Oklahoma high school was caught on video ripping a Trump sign out of a student’s hands and knocking a red MAGA cap off his head. And in the nation’s capital — where only 4 percent of voters cast ballots for Trump in 2016 — an outspoken conservative teenager said she had to leave her prestigious public school because she felt threatened. In a YouTube video, Jayne Zirkle, a high school senior, said that the trouble started when classmates at the School Without Walls discovered an online photo of her campaigning for Trump. She said students circulated the photo, harassed her online and called her a white supremacist. A D.C. school system official said they investigated the allegations and allowed Jayne to study from home to ensure she felt safe. “A lot of people who I thought were my best friends just all of a sudden totally turned their backs on me,” Jayne said. “People wouldn’t even look at me or talk to me.” For Gavin, the teasing began in fourth grade, soon after Trump announced his candidacy. After more than a year of schoolyard taunts, Gavin decided to go by his mother’s last name, Mather, when he started middle school. The teenager has been proactive, requesting that teachers call him by the new name, but it gets trickier, and more stressful, when substitutes fill in. He didn’t legally change his last name, so “Trump” still appears on the roster. The teasing has subsided, but the switch wasn’t easy. Gavin likes his real last name and feared that changing it would hurt his father’s feelings. His dad understood, but for Gavin, the guilt remains. “This is my name,” he said. “And I am abandoning my name.”

Maritza Avalos knows what's coming. It's 2020. The next presidential election is nine months away. She remembers what happened during the last one, when she was just 11. “Pack your bags,” kids told her. “You get a free trip to Mexico.” She’s now a freshman at Kamiakin High, the same Washington state school where her older sister, Cielo, confronted the teenagers who chanted “Build the wall” at a football game in late 2018. Maritza, 14, assumes the taunts that accompanied Trump’s last campaign will intensify with this one, too. “I try not to think about it,” she said, but for educators nationwide, the ongoing threat of politically charged harassment has been impossible to ignore. In response, schools have canceled mock elections, banned political gear, trained teachers, increased security, formed student-led mediation groups and created committees to develop anti-discrimination policies.

In California, the staff at Riverside Polytechnic High School has been preparing for this year’s presidential election since the day after the last one. On Nov. 9, 2016, counselors held a workshop in the library for students to share their feelings. Trump supporters feared they would be singled out for their beliefs, while girls who had heard the president brag about sexually assaulting women worried that boys would be emboldened to do the same to them. “We treated it almost like a crisis,” said Yuri Nava, a counselor who has since helped expand a student club devoted to improving the school’s culture and climate. Riverside, which is 60 percent Hispanic, also offers three courses — African American, Chicano and ethnic studies — meant to help students better understand one another, Nava said. And instead of punishing students when they use race or politics to bully, counselors first try to bring them together with their victims to talk through what happened. Often, they leave as friends.

In Gambrills, Md., Arundel High School has taken a similar approach. Even before a student was caught scribbling the n-word in his notebook in early 2017, Gina Davenport, the principal, worried about the effect of the election’s rhetoric. At the school, where about half of the 2,200 students are minorities, she heard their concerns every day. But the racist slur, discovered the same month as Trump’s inauguration, led to a concrete response. A “Global Community Citizenship” class, now mandatory for all freshmen in the district, pushes students to explore their differences. A recent lesson delved into Trump’s use of Twitter. “The focus wasn’t Donald Trump, the focus was listening: How do we convey our ideas in order for someone to listen?” Davenport said. “We teach that we can disagree with each other without walking away being enemies — which we don’t see play out in the press, or in today’s political debates.”

Since the class debuted in fall 2017, disciplinary referrals for disruption and disrespect have decreased by 25 percent each school year, Davenport said. Membership in the school’s speech and debate team has doubled. The course has eased Davenport’s anxiety heading into the next election. She doesn’t expect an uptick in racist bullying. “Civil conversation,” she said. “The kids know what that means now.” Many schools haven’t made such progress, and on those campuses, students are bracing for more abuse. Maritza’s sister, Cielo, told her to stand up for herself if classmates use Trump’s words to harass her, but Maritza is quieter than her sibling. The freshman doesn’t like confrontation. She knows, though, that eventually someone will say something — about the wall, maybe, or about how kids who look like her don’t belong in this country — and when that day comes, the girl hopes that she’ll be strong.

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Inside the Sadness Plaguing K-Pop

by NATALIE FINN | Thu., Mar. 29, 2018 3:07 PM [X]

Nothing cheers you up, lifts you up, brings you life quite like pop music. Even when it's Harry Styles or Adeleor Sam Smith or BTS achingly belting their despair into that cold, lonely night...songs that make you feel all the feelings are still songs that are taking you to new heights. There's nothing quite like a tune that hurts so good.

As we wallow, so do we celebrate.

In South Korea, the genre is known as K-Pop—a catchy moniker established in the 1990s that's starting to catch fire around the globe—and all the hallmarks of the superstars of the Western world are present and accounted for: Charismatic boy bands, polished pop princesses, infectious chart-topping singles, carefully crafted images and tender-aged men and women who've inspired a level of fanaticism reserved for...well, almost no one besides pop stars these days.

Music is the universal language, after all.

But for the second time in four months, the K-pop world is in mourning, this time following the sudden death on March 25 of 100% singer Seo Minwoo. He was 33.

The actor and boyband heartthrob reportedly suffered cardiac arrest; an official cause of death has not yet been announced.

TOP Media founder Andy Lee, the singer turned K-pop impresario who's behind the groups 100%, Teen Top, Shinhwa and UP10TION, expressed his condolences in a statement online, calling Seo a leader known for his tenderness and sincerity.

While American audiences may still be largely in the dark when it comes to the ins and outs of K-pop and its artists, our mainstream exposure fairly limited to PSY's "Gangnam Style" and, more recently, the emergence of BTS on the world stage, fans took to social media to share exactly what Seo meant to them.

"Seo Minwoo is my life mentor. He gave up everything for 100% and perfection. Words are not enough to describe how great of a person he is. How lovely, caring and talented he is. Seo Minwoo, my king... I love you," wrote Haya on Twitter.

She continued, "Seo Minwoo gave up is acting career for 100%. Fought Top Media over and over again (f*ck you tm) to keep 100% together. Everything he did he put his absolute everything in. He openly supported LGBTQ, did vlives often to talk with perfection about their concerns."

Haya's current pinned tweet is from Dec. 24, 2015: "If 100% were a religion, I'd build them a church and dedicate my whole life and soul to them."

While that's a lot, it's indicative of the level of devotion that some K-pop stars have awoken in their fans.

A number of people tweeted that upcoming "selca days"—specific days each month on which fans post selfies with their favorite idols—should be canceled out of respect for Minwoo. 100%'s fandom is called Perfection.

And SHINee World knows what they're going through.

On Dec. 18, 2017, SHINee singer Kim Jong-hyun (known as Jonghyun) committed suicide, baffling fans and even fellow K-pop stars who figured the 27-year-old was on top of the world.

"It was so shocking, because we had seen him so often at events," BTS' RM told Billboard last month. He was so successful."

"My Poet My Artist My Jonghyun I miss you," tweeted w today. In fact, there are so many newly posted photos and video clips of the young man on Twitter that, aside from the occasional mournful missive like this one, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that he's gone.

The account Jonghyun On This Day is also doing its part to keep his memory alive.

But Jonghyun's death—authorities found charred coal briquettes in a frying pan on the stove, which produced carbon monoxide—obviously rattled the music world at large on multiple levels. In addition to the personal loss felt alike by loved ones and fans who felt they knew him, mental health is not an issue that tends to get much media attention in South Korea—or in Asia overall.

"To the South Korean government: Let #Jonghyun be the light in death that he was in life," tweeted Xavier on Dec. 18. "Recognize that suicide is an epidemic in South Korea and takes strides to ending the negative stigmas around mental health and to combat this issue. Don't let Jonghyun be another statistic."

A fan started a Change.org petition demanding that entertainment companies set up mental health support systems for their artists. More than 430,000 people have signed.

After some discussion, his family agreed to make public the suicide note the singer and songwriter, who made his solo debut in 2015 with the well-received album Base, left behind. His friend and Dear Cloud singer Jang Hee-yeon, known as Nine9, posted it on her Instagram. She said she'd obtained the note two weeks before Jonghyun's death and was asked to publish it if he "disappeared from the world."

"I'm broken from the inside," the note read. "The depression that has slowly eaten away at me has finally consumed me, and I couldn't beat it."

It concluded, "The life of fame was not for me. They say it's hard to bump up against the world and become famous. Why did I choose this life? It's a funny thing. It's a miracle that I lasted this long...

"What else is there to say? Just tell me I did well. Tell me that this is enough. Tell me I worked hard. Even if you can't smile, please don't blame me as you send me off. Well done. You've really worked hard. Goodbye."

In a sign that Jonghyun's death could help bring about positive change in the way mental health and depression are publicly discussed, the circumstances of his death continue to be a topic of conversation—one that Seo Minwoo's passing, no matter what the cause, only brings to mind all over again.

Just today a fan tweeted, "Nine said on the last interview Jonghyun once told her that she brings comfort to him. She noticed his condition got worse after blue night and when he gave her the letter she told his family right away, tried to save him, to prevent the worst from happening...

"I really believe everyone around him knew about his condition and tried their best to help him. that's why it hurts so much, that even though he got help he still wanted to leave."

In an interview with Billboard last month, members of BTS said that they wanted to keep the discussion about mental health going.

"I really want to say that everyone in the world is lonely and everyone is sad," Suga, 25, said, "and if we know that everyone is suffering and lonely, I hope we can create an environment where we can ask for help, and say things are hard when they're hard, and say that we miss someone when we miss them."

Bucking national mores and the pressure to be upbeat or put up an artificially glossy front all the time, Jonghyun, who also hosted the long-running music radio program Blue Night, had spoken out publicly about his battle with depression—much like young American stars such as Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Zayn Malikand Keshahave been widely applauded for doing these days.

His last Blue Night broadcast was in March 2017 after three years behind the mic. He admitted to Esquire Korea that he didn't like traveling and considered himself a homebody—and the close confines of a radio studio, just him alone with some music, had been a perfect fit.

"It may be that I came running to radio in order to escape," he reflected to the magazine, per an English translation. "I don't really like going outside. And I don't really like having to meet a lot of people. I'm also afraid of trying new things. The radio now felt like my own personal space. It had become an escape hatch for me to greet new things without feeling awkward."

Jonghyun, who cited personal matters as the reason he was leaving the radio show, said it had become important to him to share his metaphorical scars with the world.

"I'm fundamentally a pessimistic person," he said. "Ever since I was little I showed a lot of depressive feelings, and it's the same in the present. But I don't think I can keep living my life sustaining those depressive feelings forever. You might be able to go through the early-to-mid-part of your life with that kind of melancholy. But if you want to grow, you can only survive if you throw those feelings away.

"Unless you want to get trapped within yourself and die, you have to grow no matter how much it hurts—but if you stop because you're afraid, in the end it's inevitable that you'd remain in an immature state of mind. I chose the path to transform myself. To reveal myself to the public. To attempt to make my thoughts understood. I have to make people aware that this is the kind of person I am, and I can only be on the defensive if I know that they know."

The translator noted that she avoided using the word "depression," because Jonghyun didn't use what amounted to that word specifically. Even in talking about it, those feelings of sadness remained a beast with no name.

When Jonghyun died, his SHINee band mates and members of the group Super Junior (both groups under the S.M. Entertainment umbrella), all clad in black, carried his coffin from Asan Medical Center in Seoul to a waiting vehicle. His sister headed the procession, carrying a photo of her late brother.

The funeral was private, for friends and family only, but hundreds of people lined up to see the coffin leave the hospital.

A statement from S.M. Entertainment read in part (according to Rolling Stone), "The deep sorrow cannot be compared to ones of his family who had to let go of their loving son and brother but the employees and artists of SM Entertainment, also in deep shock and sorrow, are offering condolences. Jonghyun was the best artist who loved music more than anyone and always worked hard for his performance. We ask you to refrain from making rumors or assumptions based on reports in respect of his family who are in deep sorrow from the sudden news. As his family wished, his funeral will be carried out in the quietest manner with his family members and co-workers."

But Jonghyun's death was hardly the first time the punishing pace of the K-pop machine had come under fire.

In addition to being expected to tour and crank out albums, sometimes in multiple languages (SHINee had also recorded in Japanese), the artists often appear on a never-ending stream of competition TV series in addition to doing talk shows, photo shoots and public appearances to keep the fans both sated and hungry for more.

But despite the seeming glut of artists and groups to remember (there are so manyselca days), truly breaking through as a star remains an elusive concept—and standing out in South Korea's youth-obsessed culture can feel like an insurmountable challenge.

And then there's the appearance factor. "If a girl has a bad face and a good body, the problem can be fixed with plastic surgery," Kim Min-seok, a former trainer with YG Entertainment (considered along with S.M. and JYP as the "Big Three" agencies), told Broadly. in 2016.

Moreover, the litany of groups also tend to be carefully managed, meticulously packaged pop confections, with a management company pulling the strings behind the scenes. Those who hope to make it big are expected to dedicate their lives to that goal, and that's basically what signing a contract entails.

In January 2015, NBC News cited a survey of South Korean pre-teens: When asked about career aspirations, 21 percent said they wanted to be K-pop stars.

"I am thinking only one thing—our song keeps being played," 20-year-old Sowon, a member of the girl group GFriend, which had an international hit at the time with their debut single "Glass Bead," told NBC News. "I hope to perform anywhere, anytime, even if I can't sleep or I am tired."

On Feb. 24, 2015, aspiring K-pop star Ahn So Jin died after falling 10 stories from an apartment building, with police concluding that her death was a suicide. The 22-year-old had made a splash the previous year after making it to the finals of The Kara Project—a competition show held to find girl group Kara a new member after two girls had left.

"It has to be this, or nothing," Sojin said on the show's premiere. "I can't miss this." She had been a K-pop trainee with Kara manager DSP Media for five years but her contract had reportedly ended the month before her death.

Kara disbanded for good in January 2016.

ng Ha-Jin, a 23-year-old university student who had once been a trainee with S.M. Entertainment after winning a talent competition, told NBC News in 2015 that she wasn't allowed to have a cell phone while in the program and the competition to earn a coveted slot in an actual girl group was fierce—and stressful.

"The most difficult part in fact was when I saw myself and felt like I didn't grow up," she said.

The loss of individuality isn't limited to K-pop, either.

In 2013, Minami Minegishi of Japan's AKB48—a group with over 100 rotating members who appear in different configurations at different events—shaved her head and tearfully apologized in a video confession after she spent the night with her boyfriend, an apparent infraction of a no-dating rule.

"I don't believe just doing this means I can be forgiven for what I did, but the first thing I thought was that I don't want to quit AKB48," Minegishi said, according to the BBC. AKB48's manager said Minegishi, an original member of the group when it formed in 2005, had been demoted to trainee status.

Her fans, more appalled by the self-flagellation than anything else, rallied around her, insisting she not be punished for just wanting to live her life.

In 2015, the BBC reported that members of Japanese boy band SMAP somberly dressed in black and publicly apologized on their weekly show SMAPxSMAP after they attempted to leave their longtime agency Johnny & Associates.

The K-pop scene doesn't sound quite so rigid these days, with managers and producers perhaps not wanting to alienate coveted Western audiences with oppressive behavioral strictures, but it still demands a level of old-fashioned poise and accommodation from its artists.

"If you go to the agency, every young trainee will give you a very polite bow and there are notices with the company rules on the wall to remind them how to behave," K-pop industry expert Mark Russell told the BBC in 2016.

In June 2014, Taeyeon of Girls Generation and Baekhyun of boy band EXO apologized to their respective fan bases for the "disappointment, anger, hatred, frustration, and dejection" they presumably felt when they found out that Taeyeon and Baekhyun were dating (a coupling that would seemingly send their fans over the moon, Jelena-style).

Last June, T.O.P. of the group Big Bang was hospitalized for several days after overdosing on prescription medication, the incident occurring a day after he was charged with smoking marijuana—a crime punishable by up to five years in prison in South Korea. According to Today Online, when he was caught smoking in October 2016, he issued a handwritten apology letter stating, "I deserve punishment for hurting the (BIGBANG) members, agency, public, fans and family. I'll regret this for tens of thousands of years."

T.O.P. was found guilty and received a suspended 10-month prison sentence because the judge determined that, although he had admitted his guilt and "disappointed his family and fans," he seemed sufficiently remorseful.

"I'm truly sorry that I disappointed my fans and the public," the 29-year-old, whose real name is Choi Seung-Hyun, told reporters after his sentencing last summer. I will do my best to make a fresh start and not to make such a mistake again with what I've learned from this lesson,"

In August, management company WM Entertainment announced that JinE of Oh My Girl was taking a break from the group while she sought treatment for anorexia, stating, "We will wholeheartedly support JinE while she rests and receives treatment. We apologize once more for bringing this sudden news to fans and ask that you continue to show Oh My Girl unchanging love and interest." JinE's permanent exit from the group was announced in October.

It's impossible not to note a hint of concern over past K-pop tragedy and the pitfalls of fame in this otherwise cheerful birthday greeting sent today (already March 30 in South Korea) to Cha Eunwoo, or Eunwoo, of the six-member boy band Astro.

"Mr. Cha Eunwoo Happy birthday to our sweet and sparkling fluff. AROHA are so lucky to have you," wrote Ashlyn Akiko (who changed her handle to #happychaeunwooday for the occasion). "Stay happy and healthy."

#Inside the Sadness Plaguing K-Pop #kpop #big bang #t.o.p #choi seunghyun #SHINee #Onew #Jonghyun #Key #Minho #Taemin #Kim Jonghyun #Kara #astro #cha eunwoo #oh my girl #jinE

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