#but the marketing at the time and the initial fan interpretation of the series caused a lot of people to misunderstand his character arc

[quantumshade]

so many people completely miss the point of the doctor's character arc in series 8 it's nuts. it's not about him being a "darker" or more morally ambiguous version of the character. the doctor has ALWAYS been morally ambiguous; that is a consistent character trait across all regenerations. it's about him feeling crushed under the pressure of an expectation of him to be a "hero", and the culmination of this arc is him saying onscreen "i am Literally Just a Guy and you should treat me as such"

[potteresque-ire]

This post is Part 3 of the five-part meta series on the Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) Incident, based on what has transpired up to 2021/08/22.

1) The 2nd Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) & the Yasukuni Shrine 2) Post-War Sino-Japanese Relations; “Every Chinese should visit the Yasukuni Shrine” 3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One 4) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part A 5) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part B

3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One

Parts 1 and 2 are my very rough, … kindergartenish introduction to the historical background of Zhang’s incident. For the sake of brevity (please don’t laugh), there are so many things I haven’t touched on (such as the role of the U.S., the geopolitics). There are even more things I’ve likely missed from my admitted ignorance (Sorry).

I think a fair summary of what I’ve written so far would be as follows, before we move on to other sociopolitical factors related to Zhang’s incident?

It is true that the Japanese government, while having shown signs of repentance, has yet to truly face its own past. 

It is also true that the Chinese government has been taking advantage of its national tragedy to fuel nationalistic sentiments, to spread hatred for the purpose of propaganda ...

... Propaganda that is highly sensitive to timing, the message the regime wants to send at the moment. 

In August, 2021, Sino-Japanese relations is at a nadir. The brief thaw in early 2020, initiated by the Japanese government donating masks to Wuhan when COVID first broke out, seemed to be as old as the Chinese poem printed on the shipping boxes:  山川異域 風月同天 (“Our mountains and rivers are on different lands, but our winds and moon share the same sky”)—from the 779 BCE work of a Tang dynasty monk who had sailed to Japan as a missionary, affirming the long cultural bond between the two nations. China would give masks back to Japan.

Fast forward eighteen months later, this good will is all but gone in Chinese news, on Chinese social media. The Japanese government had just vowed to join the United States to protect Taiwan, should the Chinese government furthers its military threat towards the island — the People’s Liberation Air Forces had already intruded Taiwan’s air defence zone 393 times between January 1st and August 17th of 2021 — or should the Chinese government attempts to take over the democratic island nation by force. 

Late July came, and the Tokyo Olympics presented the opportunity for the Chinese state to broadcast anti-Japanese sentiments among the general populace. 

Like USSR and the Eastern Bloc before, the Communists-ruled China saw the Olympics medal count as a matter of national pride. After the Games began, the hot search turned immediately from the Henan flood to stories of the Tokyo Games’ subjectively awful organisation, alleged cheatings by the Japanese athletes, and the perceived unfairness of, in particular, Japanese judges towards the Chinese team that cost the latter more and better medals. This fervour cumulated to the cyberbullying of Japanese athletes by high-on-nationalism Chinese netizens, who brought back Japan’s past as a reason why Japan and its people should be universally hated. Reminders of the horrific brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army eighty years before the Games surfaced in Chinese social media posts. The derogatory slangs 小日本 (“Little Japan”), and 鬼子 (Guizi “demons”), the latter harking back to the nickname of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, populated online Olympics discussions.

Japanese netizens are aware of the derogatory terms Chinese nationalistic netizens use against them. In 2010, they fought back the 小日本 and 鬼子 insults by designing cute anime characters for these names. (Source1, Source2). 

August, 2021 is not a good time to be accused of liking the Japanese.

August, 2021 is not a good time to be accused of liking the Japanese, especially if the accused is a celebrity in the c-ent industry. The ongoing Clear and Bright Campaign (清朗行動) includes, as its 8th aim, the “regulation of stars and the organisations behind them, internet behaviour of their official fan clubs”. Possibly as a welcome to the summer vacation for the country’s youth, on June 15th, 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) had announced it would spend the next two months focused on rectifying the “chaos caused by fan circles” (‘飯圈’亂象). 

The Kris Wu (吳亦凡) case that had exploded in July then turned the public’s attention (and imagination) squarely on c-ent and the alleged “insanity” of c-ent fandoms, particularly those of idols. Wu’s fans had been met with ridicule and cyberbullying, especially those who had tried to “save” their idol by attempting to perform, when the incident had first broken out, what is customary per Chinese fan circle culture—to drown the criticisms with their supportive messages, their defences of their favourite stars; with their offences towards the accusers and in some cases, who the fans point to as the true culprits accompanied by the necessary “evidences”. Widespread reports of Wu’s fans planning a prison break after Wu’s arrest, propagated by the state media despite the number of such fans could’ve numbered to no more than a handful, further fuelled the narrative that c-ent idol worship has become cult-like, with the fans being so brainwashed that they can no longer distinguish right or wrong. 

This narrative of “fans would say or do anything to defend an idol” means that if or when accusations fall on the latter, little can be said in their defence even if the defence has its merits. Fans who make the defence are accused of being “brain-disabled” (腦殘); non-fans, of being brain-disabled fans in disguise.

Political cartoon from People’s Daily, 2021/08/02, 2 days after Kris Wu’s arrest (English translations by me). The slogan at the bottom says “The Deformed “Fan Circle Culture” has turned cold”. “Turning cold” (涼了) means to lose popularity. (Source) 

Last but not least, in August 2021, the online platforms that host the content of state propaganda, of fandom talk, of c-idols’ works are also in quicksand themselves. Without getting into too much details, since earlier this year, the Chinese government has been targeting the tech giants, once considered untouchable with their significant contributions to the economy. Most international fans of c-ent are likely familiar with Tencent. Alibaba is also a major player in c-ent: it’s the owner of Youku, for example; it is also a major investor of Sina (the company in control of Weibo) and also—a piece of trivia for turtles—of Yuehua (Dd’s management company). These tech companies have been charged with antitrust violations, been the target of cybersecurity probes, accused by the state media of hurting China’s youth with “spiritual opium” in the form of video games etc, and their stock prices have been tumbling as a result. 

The tech giants, and the online platforms under their ownership, have therefore been extra vigilant, extra compliant to messages from the state, in attempts to gain the government’s favour. Just a few days ago (2021/08/21), Tencent vowed to donate 7.7 billion USD to the government, heeding Xi’s call for “common prosperity” (re-distribution of wealth), adding to the 7.7 billion USD it already donated in April for the government’s “sustainable social values” program. While both donations are officially philanthropic, most political and market watchers interpret the donations as Tencent trying to achieve a less-than-philanthropic goal—to get the state regulators off its back.

Following this line of logic then, these tech giants, and their online platforms, have got to be extra quick on their feet in August 2021 to sever ties with anyone perceived to have drawn the displeasure of the government. If that anyone is a c-ent idol, the loss for removing their works and fandom content is nothing compared to the price these companies may pay if the eyes of the state regulators train upon them: the latest fine Alibaba paid for breaking the anti-monopoly law, in April, amounted to 2.8 billion USD.  

All these factors considered, there are better days … far better days than the ones in August 2021, for a c-ent idol to have his Yasukuni Shrine visit become an item on Weibo’s hot search.

===

The Zhang Zhehan Incident Meta Series:

PART 1 PART 2 PART 3  <- YOU ARE HERE PART 4 PART 5

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep15 [FINALE]

For better or worse I think Ryukishi achieved exactly what he set out to do with this series, and I guess everyone’s just gonna be forced to reckon with how they feel about his own perspective on this franchise versus how they feel about it, lol.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut, plus Umineko spoilers.

I’m not entirely sure where to even start with this, but I guess the TL;DR is that I honestly think Gou/Sotsu was ultimately just fine despite it’s issues, and part me of can’t help but be like ‘I told you so, lol’ about how this really did end with this episode, and also committed pretty hard to the Umineko prequel elements.

It’s not like all of my theories were correct in the end, but I at least think I was pretty spot on in my prediction last week that this would end with the miracle of them side-stepping the sword issue entirely and choosing the third option of forgiveness and reconciliation. And also them ending it with an epilogue where we go back to the Matsuribayashi timeline and get a happy ending for Rika and Satoko that provides a ‘non-magical interpretation’ for the story while also giving us an idea of how Bern and Lambda formally split off into their own entities and start the relationship we see in Umineko.

I didn’t quite expect them to go down the route of having them agree to just spend a few years apart and accept that they don’t need to literally always be together, but I think that was a really good way to wrap things up between them. It’s pretty much the healthiest compromise to their conflict that doesn’t come across like it completely invalidates one of their dreams. I get why it feels too anti-climactic and convenient for people, but when you pull at that thread you get into wider topics of what the entire story is about, since this was always going to end with Satoko being redeemed and forgiven. People might not have taken him seriously, but Ryukishi was 100% genuine about his regrets about Matsuribayashi’s ending, and how part of why he came up with this new story was to create a better ending, while also doing more with Satoko as a character.

Basically I think a lot of the fandom negativity towards this boils down to people fundamentally disagreeing with the idea that Matsuribayashi was even ‘flawed’ in this sort of way to begin with, or that Satoko was badly written. It’s valid to disagree on this stuff, but at the very least we all have to grapple with how Ryukishi has his own specific relationship with this series.

People like to focus on how he’s a troll who likes to mess with people, but I feel like this is a bit of a wake-up call for people about how he’s actually extremely sincere, almost to a fault, and he likes to use his stories as a vehicle for expressing his personal philosophies and ideals. 

This whole story is also a good example of how he just sees this as ultimately being a fictional story about fictional characters, and not literally a matter of real people who need to be sentenced for their crimes or whatever. As early as the original VN he was almost being outright preachy about the message that nobody is irredeemable, and that philosophy carries through to this. But to be more specific, nobody *in this story* is irredeemable. He’s pretty open about the fact that in practice you can’t apply this sort of ideal to real life, but fictional stories are their own separate matter.

I think this whole issue of how he views this as a story first and foremost is also the central reason why this ended in a way that comes across as Satoko being let off too easy for her crimes. One way or another, Ryukishi’s made it clear that he sees this as being no different to how other characters had arcs where they committed crimes but still got forgiven, or how Takano is basically a straight up war criminal who also got forgiven for her crimes.

Anyway, this episode at least committed to the Umineko stuff, so that was satisfying. Sure there’s people that still want to deny it, but at this point I think a lot of people are just being stubborn, so it’s not like anything would have really convinced them, lol. I’m also genuinely not sure what people even would have expected them to do beyond what we saw her, aside from having the two of them literally put on their gothic lolita outfits and turn to the camera and go ‘we are literally Bernkastel and Lambdadelta from the video game series Umineko When They Cry’. I almost feel like there’s some kind of misunderstanding from people who aren’t familiar with Umineko when it comes to the idea of what it even means for this to be ‘an Umineko prequel’, or ‘a Bern/Lambda origin story’. I mean, this is quite literally exactly what I expected and hoped for in that regard. It’s not like I was expecting them to incorporate anything related to, like, Beatrice or the Ushiromiya family.

I think this is also one of those things where you just have to decide for yourself whether or not you want to earnestly engage with the story that’s being told, or if you want to assume that there’s some level of malice or trickery going on.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting them to literally have Rika and Satoko recite part of Bern and Lambda’s final conversation with each other word for word, lmao. Combined with the scene at the end where ‘Witch Satoko’ talks to herself about how she’s going to give her body back to Satoko while she goes chasing after Rika, it was literally just the exact origin story of their relationship as it’s depicted in Umineko.

I still feel like this would all only really be ‘worth it’ if we actually get something like a full on anime remake for Umineko, but at this point I can’t help but feel satisfied with this part of it all.

It’s not like I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is perfect or anything, though. I don’t hate it as much as basically everyone else does, but I think Ryukishi’s the sort of VN writer who really struggles with the shift to writing for an anime. I think a big part of the frustration people have is just from how this is formatted as a weekly anime series spread across basically an entire year, instead of being something like a stand-alone VN chapter that you can read at whatever pace you want, even if it ultimately takes the same amount of time to read as it would to watch all of Gou/Sotsu.

There’s also the whole issue of this being a sort-of-remake, which snowballed into a whole list of structural problems. They absolutely tried too hard to have their cake and eat it too, and they should have just committed to it being made for old fans only, instead of trying to sincerely incorporate elements from the VN that old fans don’t care about anymore because they’ve gone over it already.

And as I’ve said several times before, it was a major issue for them to decide to put Nekodamashi in the middle of Gou and then spend like 20 episodes on flashback answer arcs until finally getting back to that cliffhanger. I’ve been waiting until this all ended to decide exactly how I feel about that, and now that it’s all over I still think it was a really bad idea. I don’t think it was an issue for them to reveal that Satoko’s the culprit that early, but having the gun cliffhanger specifically happen that early just gave people misguided expectations and tainted the answer arcs because people were just impatient to get back to the cliffhanger. And then the cliffhanger itself ended up being somewhat anti-climactic, which is what I’d been fearing would happen. It would have worked fine if they shuffled it around so that the cliffhanger happened right before Kagurashi and was followed up in the very next episode, or if this was a VN where you could binge your way through the flashback stuff, but spending like half of an entire real-life year to get back to that point only to have the resolution be ‘Satoko just shoots Rika and the death loops keep going’ just didn’t really work properly.

I’m a lot more generous towards the Akashi arcs than most people are, since I think they really over-estimate how much re-used content there is there, but they still suffer from the central issue of the show trying to be accessible for new fans. It could have been heavily condensed otherwise, without losing anything in terms of Satoko’s whole character arc.

On the other hand I think the first half of Kagurashi was awful specifically because it highlighted how bad of an idea it was to put Nekodamashi so early in the story. They still ended up having to go back to that arc and repeat it anyway, in the most 1:1 recap-y way in the whole show, but that wouldn’t have even been an issue in the first place if that was instead the first time that arc happened in the show.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would rearrange the story to make it flow better while still following Ryukishi’s intentions, and I think they could have condensed it into a 2-cour season with this sort of structure if they did something like this:

-First arc where Rika gets thrown back into the loop and quickly figures out that somebody intentionally caused this to happen, and it’s not Takano because at least in this idea of mine she’d try and investigate her only to find out that this version of Takano regrets everything and is planning to flee the village with Tomitake.

Basically I think this could tie into the idea of Satoko initially wanting to just concoct an idea world for Rika so that she won’t want to leave this time, but sort of like what I think happens in Saikoroshi, Rika would still reject it, and this time around there’d be the additional layer of her knowing that somebody did this to her for an unknown reason. Maybe they could even initially market it as a new adaptation or a remake of Saikoroshi, and then reveal that it’s a sequel, to keep that whole element to the series. Either way I think this would end with everything going to shit when Rika rejects that fragment and wants to go back to St. Lucia’s, and Satoko basically snaps and kills her, and that way the audience can find out about her being the culprit without Rika finding out about it yet.

Maybe there could even be some dramatic irony where Rika’s attempts to meddle with certain ‘trigger events’, and her displaying her looper side, inadvertently triggers people around her to get paranoid, and the whole fragment would start to spiral into tragedy from there. I think they could at least use the whole conflict in Tatariakashi about Teppei actually being good this time as a starting point for that sorta thing.

-Second arc, rounding out the first cour, which is basically just Satokowashi. I don’t think there’s much that you’d need to change here, but like I said above I like the idea of her initially trying to just invent a perfect world for Rika and her to live in, instead of jumping straight to murder. But maybe instead of her literally just watching Rika’s loops, she could instead just be stuck using her looping powers to try and figure out how to create that ‘perfect world’ in the first place, by personally investigating all of the different tragedies and how to prevent them.

-Staring the second cour, a third arc where we basically just get to see those loops Satoko goes through, and her whole process of solving the tragedies and ‘purifying’ characters like Teppei and Takano, until we eventually see her perspective on the first arc, and how she reacts to Rika ultimately rejecting the world she tried to make for her.

-A fourth and final arc which is basically just Nekodamashi + Kagurashi, where she just totally snaps and tries to just torture Rika into never wanting to leave the village again, and eventually Satoko gets exposed and they have their direct confrontation with each other.

With that sorta story structure, you’d keep all the relevant bits of Gou/Sotsu as it is now, while being more focused on Rika and Satoko instead of doing kinda half-assed reruns of the Rena and Shion arcs. It’d also push the big cliffhanger between them until near the end of the show, while still revealing to the audience relatively early on that Satoko’s the culprit.

I’d also like them to do more with Satoshi and Shion, so maybe like with how Teppei gets redeemed and Satoko almost gets to have a happy life with him in Tatariakashi, the central question arc of this hypothetical story could also involve Satoko making sure that Satoshi wakes up from his coma, and Shion also gets to have a good relationship with all of them. You could probably do something interesting with the idea of Satoshi and Shion being in the camp of not trusting Teppei and his whole redemption arc.

Honestly I could spend a long time talking about how I would have done things differently, lol. For one thing, I think the Akashi arcs would have been much better if they just changed it so that Satoko used psychological tactics to make people paranoid, and we completely cut out the whole syringe plot device. I get how it fits with Satoko’s whole certainty gimmick, but it made those arcs way too predictable. Even if we knew the outcome, it’d at least be entertaining to see exactly how Satoko might go out of her way to set up the different tragedies. We kinda got glimpses of that sorta plot point in Wataakashi when things seemed to go outside of her control, but they didn’t really do much with it.

Anyway, this is a whole lot of words to say that I think that in spite of the serious structural issues going on, I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is fine, and was at least working with a lot of perfectly good ideas that could have been executed much better.

Also, on a side note, that one scene during their fist-fight at the start where the art-style changes a bit was kinda weird, but I really liked how it looked, and part of me almost wishes the whole show looked like that, lol. I like Akio Watanabe’s character designs, but I feel like that sort of stylized, almost TWEWY-ish art style would have been really fitting for this series, especially in the horror/action parts.

Oh, and the new rendition of You was so good it almost felt emotionally manipulative, lol.

[midshipmank]

These Violent Delights Review (contains spoilers)

Where to begin with this book? I finished it almost two weeks ago, but I put off reviewing it because I had a lot of thoughts about it and a lot of ranting to friends to do before I felt calm enough to write an actual review. I personally dislike rant reviews and didn’t want to be the author of one. And it’s not like I hated this book! It had so much potential! I still think the concept was great! But I had so many craft problems with this book that I actually started writing notes and using page flags to keep track of everything that bothered me. I don’t normally do that!

So here we go. TLDR: Brilliant idea, terrible execution.

I split my page flags into 3 categories while reading: language, character, and gang-related (which ended up becoming worldbuilding in general). All of these informed my thoughts on what I found to be the biggest problem with this book in the end, which was the fact that it was a retelling. Or rather, it was supposed to be. This book is marketed as “Romeo and Juliet in 1920s Shanghai,” but it really, really does not want to be Romeo and Juliet. It is fighting that framework with everything it’s got. It makes me think that the idea of retelling Romeo and Juliet, regardless of setting, was probably the original inspiration for the book, but it definitely outgrew the play. The author needed to just let the retelling go and let the story be free.

What really firmly convinced me that this should not have been a R&J retelling was actually the author’s note in the back of the book. Gong talks about how, though there was no blood feud between two gangs at this time, she tried to keep the story as true to history as possible. So she lists all of the groups that were vying for power in 1920s Shanghai, all of whom were featured in the story in some way. And that’s exactly the problem. From a political perspective, Romeo and Juliet is a very simple play. There are only three groups with power: the Montagues, the Capulets, and the Prince. In 1920s Shanghai, there were always at least four (counting all the foreigners as one group) and, with her added blood feud, there’s always at least FIVE. If you have three other powerful groups running around causing problems, it pretty much takes all the intensity of your blood feud out of your blood feud. With everything else that was going on with the Communists, Nationalists, and foreigners, whenever the blood feud between the gangs came up, I was always sort of like, “Why is this here? It feels so pointless. What could it possibly add to the story?” All it really did was slow everything down because the gangs refused to work with each other, and add a layer of ~forbiddenness~ to the main romance. The actual plot of the story, about a British businessman unleashing a madness-inducing insect upon Shanghai, had literally nothing to do with the blood feud.

It would have made more sense to insert Roma and Juliette into two of the existing powers of historical Shanghai, and, indeed, Gong almost did: Roma could have been part of the “foreigners” block, like Paul Dexter. But for some reason the White Flowers were treated as separate from the foreigners for reasons I don’t totally understand. In the author’s note, Gong talks about how the Russian refugees in Shanghai never actually held much power, but that there was a reason she made them equal in power to the Scarlet Gang in this story. She doesn’t ever actually give that reason. Basically, as I read the author’s note, I kept thinking, “Then why didn’t you write about this? Or that? Or that? Why did you add all this stuff, when the actual history is more interesting?”

The other things that made this feel really unlike Romeo and Juliet are all character and gang-related. The thing that makes Romeo and Juliet WORK is that the characters, even when foolish and impulsive, COMMIT to the foolish and impulsive decisions they make. And those decisions have MASSIVE consequences. In a short series of fatal moves, they bind themselves to their fates. But halfway through this book, in the middle of yet another argument about what should be done (if anything) about the madness, I stopped and thought to myself, what has been done? What have these characters actually been doing? I was halfway through the book and it felt like nothing had happened. Sure, people had died and guns had been fired, but what were the consequences? Had anything actually CHANGED? It was at that point that I began to add page flags and take notes. I was tired and frustrated by the endless pages of characters waffling around Shanghai, having the same arguments over and over, and not accomplishing anything. This book was paced like it was written by the seat of Gong’s pants during NaNoWriMo, and then never underwent any significant structural edits. (The meanest my rants about this book ever got was after I finished it and described it to my twin as “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But that’s still what most of it felt like.)

One of the best examples of what I mean is a persistent problem I had with Juliette that was both character- and gang-related. Basically: there’s a point in the book where she thinks that everyone in Shanghai can recognize her on sight (and indeed, this does happen) because she’s the heir to a very powerful gang and she dresses in American clothes. So far so good. But on another occasion, she raids some place in pursuit of the Larkspur with Roma at her side in front of at least a hundred witnesses, and then….nothing. She doesn’t find the Larkspur, and later when talking to one of her cousins, she worries that her cousin might have learned about what she did. But then she thinks, no, it’s not possible that anyone knows I did that with Roma! And she’s right. SHE’S RIGHT. She waved her gun around and shouted in front of at least a hundred people, and was clearly working with Roma while she did it, AND NO ONE FOUND OUT. Things like this happened over and over with Juliette. Normally I’d love an interpretation of Juliet who’s so hot-headed and driven, but she got away with SO MUCH without ever being recognized or experiencing any consequences. In the end, my suspension of disbelief broke. Juliette’s antics, and consequently all the rest of the gang-related drama, became melodrama. It made me roll my eyes. I just couldn’t believe it anymore. This whole thing with Juliette wasn’t the only gang-related thing that frustrated me, but it was the biggest one.

In an effort to give Gong the benefit of the doubt: Romeo and Juliet can be read quite melodramatically. Maybe this is the effect she intended? Maybe she wanted us not to take it seriously?

But that brings me to my next point: at times, this book seemed to take itself TOO seriously. I got this impression mostly from the language. My initial reaction to the prose was, “Wow, this is so beautiful!” Eventually, though, it mostly just seemed purple. I kept wanting to cut sentences in half. It was like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a normal YA book or if it wanted to emulate William Shakespeare. So in the end, it mostly just seemed like an overwritten YA book in which the characters spouted needlessly flowery lines that just sounded silly. Again, it became melodrama. This was actually the first thing I started page-flagging.

The problem with the language wasn’t just silly though; it also had a detrimental effect on the plot and characterization. At times, the book was written in third-person omniscient and at times it was in third-person close. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but with the confusion of the plot I described above, it became difficult to keep track of who knew what. There were two separate times in the book when the characters discovered something about the monster and I thought, “Wait….didn’t everyone already know that?” One of these times was within the last twenty or so pages. I’m trying to stay calm right now, but it was unbelievably frustrating for something that had been obvious since the first page to be realized by one of the main characters at the very end of the book. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw the book across the room. But it is very pretty, so I didn’t.

The detrimental effect the language had on character was mostly that I never felt like I knew any of the characters. They’re fond of reminiscing dramatically on the past, but all we ever get are random details and no actual story. I kept waiting for a flashback that never came. I’m not a huge fan of flashbacks, but this book really, really could have used one. Both Roma and Juliette are very poetic about their shared history, but it all rang hollow because I felt like I had nothing real to grasp onto. They played games by the docks and killed each other’s loved ones? That’s pretty much all I got. By the end of the book, I still had no idea why they even liked each other. It’s mentioned several times that they thought they could end the blood feud, but, given how the blood feud pales in comparison to the actual history of Shanghai, that didn’t seem like much. The blood feud is not Shanghai’s biggest problem historically or in this book! So why should I care?

So we come back to the main problem of this book not feeling like Romeo and Juliet. It doesn’t want to be Romeo and Juliet! It is begging to be something else! The real causes of turmoil in Shanghai at this point in history were the foreign powers and the workers’ strikes. Gong says that herself! She made the foreigners the villain, which I think was a very good choice, but the workers’ strikes and growing Communist party just ended up feeling like set dressing. Background scenery. It added nothing to the plot but a red herring. In the authors’ note, Gong says that if she had followed history more closely, there would have been strikes in every chapter. I can understand why that would seem overwhelming, but if she didn’t wanted to include the workers’ strikes, then maybe….this should have been set….in a different time period….because this time period….has too many political elements….for an R&J retelling to work…. Just a thought! Or maybe she should have tossed R&J, which is the option I prefer, because the actual history is, as I have said before, much more interesting than a fictional blood feud between gangs.

In an effort to not be entirely negative about this book, I do have a mild interest in reading a comparison of this book with The Beetle by Richard Marsh. The Beetle is a Victorian novel and, like many Victorian novels, it’s about Britain’s fear of reverse-colonization, or being infiltrated by one of the countries’ they’ve invaded. In The Beetle, the infiltration comes in the form of a scarab from Egypt that carries some curse. I don’t remember all the details, since I read the book several years ago, but I found it interesting that this book had a similar concept of foreign invasion via insects. I think it would be interesting to compare the two, especially since they have opposite perspectives on British imperialism.

So, in summary: I think the idea of this book was great. I would have loved to read a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1920s Shanghai that worked; unfortunately, for a variety of craft problems related to pacing, worldbuilding, characterization, and language, I don’t think this book worked at all. It wanted to be so much more than a Romeo and Juliet retelling, and the author should have let it.

Am I going to read the second book? Maaayyybe. I might get curious enough about the backstory to see whether she puts it in that book. But if I do read it, I’m getting it from the library.

[argentdandelion]

Jesse & Lake: Better than Callum x Rayla?

1. Introduction

Infinity Train's second season and The Dragon Prince, despite their very different lengths, have a lot of similarities. The human male lead travels through an unfamiliar and even dangerous land with a female humanoid, the human male lead cares deeply about his little brother(1), there’s an animal companion(s) that can’t talk, and there’s both scary and ligthhearted moments. Even their relationship arcs of their teen leads are similar. The relational character arcs of Callum to Rayla in The Dragon Prince and Jesse Cosay with Lake (initially called M.T.) progress from hostility/aggressive disinterest to chummy behavior of smiling, self-disclosure, and physical affection.

2. Shipping Fuel

The relationships between the shows’ main teen characters are triply inclined to “ships”. Apparently, ships commonly arise when characters have strong emotions with or about each other, whether it’s positive or negative. When the characters have some degree of physical intimacy (e.g., hugging, sleeping next to or on each other), and interpersonal vulnerability (e.g., disclosing their insecurities or backstories to each other), it’s even more likely a “ship” will develop, whether in canon or in fan works. Adding onto it is the long history of media pairing up male and female lead characters by the end, especially if they’re on friendly terms, leading to viewers’ cultural expectations.

(For the sake of brevity, only the strongest or most obvious specific instances of would-be shipping fuel for each series will be covered.)

3. Specific Instances: The Dragon Prince

Initially (“What is Done”, episode 2, season 1) Rayla is hostile to Ezran and Callum, given she is an assassin ordered to kill Prince Ezran who believes Callum to be Ezran. When she learns the egg of the dragon prince wasn’t destroyed (a big part of the reason assassins went to kill Prince Ezran), she loses her motive and hostility. (“Moonrise”, episode 3).For most of the third episode, Callum only sticks with her because his little brother trusts her and he apparently wants to accompany his brother. However, by the episode’s end, he commits to going along with her and Ezran to where the dragon egg came from and returning it to its mother. On their quest, Raylla becomes friendlier, and more overtly physical or outright affectionate with Callum.

In “Breathe” (Season 2, episode 9), Callum must fight off the effects of performing Dark Magic, which resembles being deadly ill. Rayla is hugging him and pleading him to stay with her, and is crying. When Callum suddenly recovers, she sits back and reverses the intensified physical presence, playing it off in a casual (if still definitely chummy) way.

In “The Midnight Desert”, one character suggests Rayla and Callum are a couple, and likely does this just to see them squirm. There’s a sequence in which Callum tries to comfort Rayla in her troubled sleep and sadness. As Callum encourages Rayla out of her funk, the music playing in the background is somehow similar to The Lion King’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”. Callum gets closer to her with several compliments, including on her beauty, and they kiss. Although Rayla aggressively states they must never mention it again, the romance (unfortunately) develops further.

In “The Final Battle”, there’s a dramatic sequence where Rayla tackes a bad guy off a mountain and falls to her death, Callum jumps after her. He initially is unsuccessful casting his arms-to-wings spell, as previously in the episode. Only after a romantic moment and a heartfelt “Rayla, I love you” does he manage to sprout wings and save Rayla, and they kiss.

4. Specific Instances: Infinity Train

When Lake meets Jesse (“The Black Market Car”, episode 1), she shouts at him, destroys his sunglasses, and is repeatedly aggressive, argumentative, and insulting. Even when it's established they're friends with the same superpowered deer, she refuses to be friends by association and tries to leave. When they’re in a situation where fighting with each other would cause them to be trapped by an enormous tree of petty conflict (“The Family Tree Car”, episode 2), they quickly act exaggeratedly friendly, polite, and complimentary towards each other. When they’re no longer in danger, they ride the antlers of the superpowered deer up the tree (necessarily sitting very close to each other) and Lake makes a (half-hearted) apology for yelling at him earlier.

They get much friendlier over time, as Jesse and Lake spend a lot of time physically close to each other and touching, whether it’s a hand on the shoulder, hugging, holding hands while running or just shoving.

He stands up to the Apex when they want to kill Lake in “The Mall Car”, and his number goes down to 0 and he tries bringing Lake back home when his exit appears while they’re chased by the Flecs. However, he is unable to take Lake along, and desperately holds hands with her as his body is sucked away to his destination.

Both Jesse and Callum do something impossible to save the girl in their shows or segments’ final episodes (at time of writing). In “The Number Car”, though Jesse’s number is 0 and he was sent home, he’s still “in processing”. evidently, his sheer emotional distress of leaving without Lake was so great the Train re-appeared to him. When Lake finds out Jesse’s emotional distress or trauma at being forced to leave Lake was so great he got back on the train, she smiles (lovingly, one could say). When Jesse wakes up in a pool of water after his memories are played for everyone to see, they hold hands and hug and smile.

5. Jesse and Lake Don’t End up Together!?

For all the manner, frequency, and intensity of their friendliness and physical affection that could be used to predict they’ll end up romantically paired in the end, it still stays a friendship. Refreshingly, it stays a friendship despite very strong “shipping clues”. For example, while climbing down The Family Tree, Jesse has to grab her by the waist while complimenting her on how shiny she is, and Lake grimaces. (And this is only the second episode they’re together!) Furthermore, when Jesse is laying unconscious in a pool of water and Lake is smiling at him, one might believe the situation is ripe for a Sleeping Beauty-style wakeup with a kiss...and it doesn’t happen. And although the manner in which Lake climbs over Jesse’s torso to wake him up with a painful flick to the forehead in the same episode might be lingered upon as romantic (or...steamy) in other shows, it’s not here. M.T. even blushes around Jesse a few times, and it’s still doesn’t end up a romance!

Even more shockingly, one might think the characters ship the two together. Perry, a body-controlling parasite takes over their deer companion Alan Dracula in one episode, and illustrates how much Alan Dracula loves Lake and Jesse by showing them perched together on Alan Dracula’s antlers with an outline of a heart. It’s easy to take this out of context and suppose either Alan Dracula or the parasite were “shipping” Lake and Jesse.

An antagonist, Mace (a “Flec”: a violent enforcer of mirror law) calls Jesse Lake’s “boyfriend” and believes Lake might want to go to prom; one could assume he thought Lake wanted to go to prom with Jesse. Although Lake answers Mace’s mention of prom by asserting she and Jesse are friends, without explicitly refuting his romantic insinuations in a flustered way people may have used as shipping fuel, shippers might ignore her word choice or simply expect the season to end with a kiss anyway.

Furthermore, the conclusions of one important person who doesn’t ship them, One-One, can be easily waved away. In contrast to Mace, after Jesse wakes up and they’re happy (and physically affectionate) with their reuniting, one character, One-One, says: “This train [the Infinity Train] is for fixing problems, not for hang time with buds." Although One-One characterizes M.T and Jesse as friends, given he is a robot with little understanding of human norms and relationships, it’s easy to disregard him as mistaken and go with romantic interpretations.

6. Why Is Jessie & Lake Better? **

Jesse & Lake is better than Rayllum for two reasons. Firstly, it doesn’t go into a well-trod, cliché turn. For all the “hints” it drops, all the scenarios one might find in a “shippy” fanfiction, and even how some characters seem to portray them in a romantic relationship, it doesn’t turn into a romance. Secondly, it provides representation for male-female friendship, showing it as something valuable in itself and not valuable only as a transitional state for romance. Of the examples from comparable shows the author can recall, such a relationship is hard to find among lead characters, and that Jesse and Lake can be so physically affectionate to each other without it ever becoming a romance makes it especially striking.

So many kids’ cartoons, including ones with comparable tones and styles, end up pairing the lead(s) romantically at some point. It’s almost inevitable: some shows even put undue focus on the romance to the exclusion of what brought people to the show in the first place. Infinity Train choosing something different showcases its bold, creative, polished storywriting and characterization, marking it as exceptional even among the excellent cartoons of the 2010s.

(1) In The Dragon Prince, Ezran is technically his step-half-brother, but the dynamic's equivalent.

[hellyeahheroes]

“If you are poor how do you have an iPhone”

This is something that was gnawing at me for several weeks by now. Very recently comicbook twitter has gone on an anti-piracy outrage when one of the indie creators found out their comic book, that same one that had to change from selling in floppies to only selling in trades due to low sales, had hundreds of thousands of views on a pirate website. Due to the respect I have for that creator, I want to preface that what I am about to discuss is not a defense of piracy per se. it is not an argument that even applies in a large scale to indie scene that by far avoids some of the issues I will be talking about.

While I would never openly condone piracy, I have found myself playing devil’s advocate on that day out of sheer anger at one very specific argument that I have seen being thrown around by people condemning piracy. The exchange usually went like this - someone would go and try to say that comics are too expensive and that person would then be mocked for posting from their iPhone or another company equivalent. Every time I saw such behavior I have called it out. In some cases, people would apologize upon me explaining why this line of argument is out of the line. But in one a person had gotten furious I dared to question them, quickly devolving to childish insults and outright toxic behavior (the fact this person is an editor at Geeks World Wide made me completely give up on that website). But that is beside the point.

I want to just make it very clear that this “argument” is rooted in classism and, quite frankly, doesn’t even work. Let us explain the latter first

1. Why You Cannot Just Buy A Single Book

First I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the people using this argument. So we will do something dreadful and talk about math. For the purpose of this argument, I’m even going to go as far as not address the fact that even if you buy an iPhone through installment payments, at one point you are supposed to just have finished paying for the hardware. Meanwhile comic books expect you to keep buying if not one title, then hopefully another effectively forever. This fact in itself breaks the whole line of argument; A person could have wrapped up paying for the iPhone long before they ended in a financial situation where they cannot afford even comics. I will be ignoring this to address what I believe to be a steel man version of the argument - the strongest possible interpretation I can imagine. But even if we assume we live in a capitalist nightmare of endless payments, the rhetorics do not hold water.

Currently, on Apple official store, the newest iPhone11 costs you 30 dollars a month, while iPhone11 Pro is for 25$. In theory, the comparison that is presented should therefore work. After all, if you can afford 25$ dollars you can easily spare $5 for a comic book, right? For that price, you could buy as much as 4 comic books each month. Except that this assumption comes from a perspective that in order to read a single comic book all you need to do is buy that one comic book. Which is not the case. Or rather, it might be a case if we’re talking about independent publishers or markets like European or manga. But is certainly not one for Marvel and DC. While the problem is better than it once was we still regularly end in a situation where, in order to understand what is going on in a single Big 2 book, you need to read several others. This is a common case with big events. Let’s take a look at recently finished Absolute Carnage

This event had the gall to ask you to buy seven books and then upped it to nine. Nine comic books roughly 5 dollars per issue is 45$. To buy all of it would be to spend the equivalent of your iPhone11 Pro fee for five months.

Someone might now say that you obviously do not need to read the entire event. But the truth is, you do not really know that when it comes to making preorders. The event comics are deliberately constructed in such a way to trick people into thinking they have to buy all of it to understand what is going on. It was true when they were humongous, reaching even a hundred issues like the first Civil War, and it is true now. And while veteran fans have learned that usually you only need to follow main series and tie-ins written by its writer, even that can be a strain on someone’s budget. It might be that this person could only afford this one, single comic book. So when they suddenly find what might be their only source of entertainment incomprehensible without paying more money, they may face a dilemma. Deny yourself your one source of joy for any duration of time from a month to half of a year. Or quickly pirate that one book you never wanted to and was never interested in buying in the first place until you had the title you were paying for effectively held hostage.

I want to underline this is not just events. The most outrageous case of this issue right now is the X-Men line since Jonathan Hickman’s takeover. Which has become so self-referential you need to read all the titles in order to understand any single one. Without doing it the books become incomprehensible. This is me speaking from experience here. I was only interested in a single title from the initial launch. But the moment I saw characters talking about events from another book in a way that assumes I’m up to speed, I dropped it. 

In order to get into this so-called great new jumping-in point as it launched fans needed to first spend around $20 a month to buy two miniseries for 3 months. And as Dawn of X rolled in, the number of books rose and keeps rising. X-Men, X-Force, bi-weekly New Mutants, Excalibur and Fallen Angels already request you to invest an equivalent of the monthly price of an iPhone11. And they soon shall be joined by Wolverine, Hellions, Cable, X-Men/Fantastic Four and possibly monthly Giant-Size X-Men. Those keeping attention to the math part might have noticed we are a single series (and we are lead to believe there is more than one coming) from X-Men becoming an investment equal to paying for two separate iPhone11s each month. It is proof that the Big 2 has adopted a “more eggs, fewer baskets” mentality. This customer-unfriendly approach to storytelling seems by design prone to weeding out and turning away all but big spenders who can afford to regularly buy multiple books. it is not different from the exploitative systems we find in video games, designed to prioritize so-called “whales”, as the industry came to call people who can blow ungodly amounts of money on a game, over regular customers.

2. The Rhetoric Itself Is Flawed

However, even if the hypothetical scenario presented by people using the “why do you have an iPhone” argument was true, we need to recognize how toxic this argument is. First of all, this whole line of reasoning is out of touch and assumes that a working iPhone is a luxury, while more and more times in modern society it becomes a necessity. I live in Poland and have not encountered this issue yet, I keep hearing of people who simply cannot get a job without having an iPhone. It’s because more and more fields require you to have working company apps or use them to find new workers in the first place. The miniature computer in your hand has become such a utility tool it now is actively getting harder to operate in modern society without affording it. This line of argument only betrays that you are out of touch almost as much as a similar argument being used to claim people who have flatscreen TVs are not “really poor”. Currently, flatscreens are only TVs being produced and sold anymore, cheap for purchase and cheaper to maintain than a full-sized TV long time out of use and with spare parts likely no longer produced.

Moreover, you don’t really know how exactly that specific person’s financial situation is. It may be that yes, they can afford an iPhone out of necessity but it does require them to be on a tight budget. Maybe the phone itself is actually passed on from a family member - speaking here as someone whose every phone ever was such a gift. It may even be that the person had to work extremely hard and save up a lot to afford this phone and simply is not able to expand on their profits anymore. Or, as mentioned above, that they once could and finished paying for the last installment but have fallen on hard times ever since. The list goes on. The crux of it is that you do not know other people’s stories and have no right to hold them to some arbitrary standards without that knowledge.

Which brings me to my final point - the whole argument relies on perpetuating a myth of “properly poor” people. The made-up image of nobly suffering poor who deny themselves any and all form of luxury in life (and remember, we established that the whole argument relies on seeing modern phones as a luxury, not a necessity they have become) to save money to get themselves out of poverty. Not to mention a similar myth of “kindhearted poor” who gladly give up what little they have to help others - the kind media love to perpetuate to distract from how bad the state of society is to lead to this situation in the first place. This not only does mispresent how the whole capitalist system is rigged to make it easier to save money the higher up the financial ladder you climb, but it also does not understand human nature. Human beings aren’t machines and it is impossible to really go through every single day without some sort of relief. Sometimes it may be a video game or a dinner at a fancy restaurant. Sometimes it may be a smartphone. Or a luxury item you never plan to use but just want to have to remind you what your goal is.

Yet our society made a game out of shaming and being judgmental to every poor person who spends even the tiniest amount of money on escapism, on any sort of relief from how stressful poverty is. And, speaking as someone who had panic attacks caused by sudden financial expenses wrecking my monthly budget, it is stressful. We expect people to act as all forms of entertainment and escapism aren’t also contributing to one of our human needs, the need to simply be able to wind down for even a moment, and thus not worth spending money on. Then we judge them if they resort to illegal means to fulfill that need. 

I would go as far as making the argument this is a self-perpetuating problem. This very line of thinking, that poor must be at all times miserable and them spending even the slightest amount of money on anything nice is worth scorn? it is what actively encourages them to resort to piracy even if they could afford to buy comics. They are being constantly told by society they shouldn’t buy themselves anything not essential. And then the society acts surprised when they then fulfill their needs through illegal means to save money. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I am not making this post to defend piracy. But I think we need to seriously consider what kind of rhetorics is being used to condemn it and what it actually says about people who use it and those who silently nod in agreement.

- Admin

[nikhilgraphic]

10 Design Career Lessons From Paul Rand

Paul Rand is understood round the world for creating a number of the foremost enduring graphic designs of the past century, including the long-lasting IBM logo. In a storied career that spanned decades, Paul Rand immersed himself in corporate logo design, ventured into then-little known design trends together with his embrace of Swiss Style, and taught students about the finer points of graphic design as Yale University’s Professor Emeritus of graphic design. From such a larger-than-life figure in design, you'll easily learn tons of actionable takeaways which will help your own career in graphic design. After all, as Rand was keen on saying, “Everything is design! Everything.” We searched Rand’s impressive contributions to the industry, and these are the ten most vital design career lessons he has got to teach us.

1. Embrace Design Trends That Are Revolutionary

If you’ve been reading our blog for any length of your time , you’ll notice that we’re big fans of varied design trends. We’ve covered everything from highly impactful trends like artistic movement design to more unorthodox ones like mail art design, also as yearly trends in graphic design. Being conscious of trends and appreciating what they will do for your craft features a long history in graphic design. Rand himself became a lover of Swiss Style relatively early in his career, which led to his unique interpretation of design, stateside, learn how to bring creativity just find the best institutions which have providing the best graphic designing institute in Delhi join there today and get start your journey.

You have to recollect that Swiss Style—in spite of its somewhat misleading name—actually originated in Russia, Germany, and Holland within the 1920s. Swiss refined its basic design elements within the 1950s and made it their own. But in America during Rand’s early career (the 1940s and 1950s), this approach to style , with its specialise in using mathematical grids to arrange visual information and Helvetica fonts to market minimalism, wasn't very well-known. By immersing himself within the works of Swiss designers like Klee , Rand was ready to incorporate Swiss Style into his own artworks. It just goes to point out you that adopting a design trend, then putting your own spin thereon , may be a recipe for fulfillment . Rand understood this better than anyone when he said, “Don't attempt to be original; just attempt to be good.”

2. find out how to style Minimalist Logos

Logo design is probably one among the foremost popular areas of graphic design. It combines vibrant colors, memorable shapes, and company messaging to make entire brand identities that have remained unchanged for many years and decades.

To say that Rand excelled at logo design would be an understatement! Corporate logo creation was his signature practice. consider it just like the graphic-design equivalent of the signature song for your favorite band.

Some of the brands that he designed logos include:

IBM

UPS

ABC

Westinghouse

Morningstar, Inc.

NeXT

Enron

If you're taking a deeper check out these logos, you’ll begin to note a pattern relatively quickly, thanks to Rand’s devotion to Swiss Style: They’re all quite minimalist, with a stress on simple shapes and typography.

The IBM logo is simply a series of horizontal, blue bars against a white background, spelling out the company’s acronym. Similarly, the earliest iteration of the ABC television network’s logo, debuting in 1962, was another wordmark logo (this time in multiple colors) inside a circle. Both of those designs have absolutely no excesses; you'll even say that they’re bare-bones. However, what makes them visually attractive, more so than, say, brutalist designs, is their dedication to visual harmony. In fact, Rand’s own belief was that a logo wouldn’t endure the test of your time unless it had been specifically designed with both simplicity and restraint. As he acknowledged in his seminal book, A Designer’s Art: “…ideas don't got to be esoteric to be original or exciting.”

3. Understand the worth of Being Self-Taught

It’s true that there are many talented and successful designers who obtain a proper education in graphic design. It’s equally true that you simply are often successful within the design industry albeit you’re self-taught. Rand is a stimulating case because he’s equal parts of both.

He visited three art schools as a young man:

The ny School for Design

The Arts Students League of latest York

Yale University

However, Rand always considered himself mainly self-taught when it came to graphic design. His interest in and love for graphic design was born out of self-education by reading many German and British art and style magazines, which his formal education didn’t provide.

Through this activity, he became conversant in Klee and graphic designers like A.M. Cassandra. Through this self-directed study, he started learning about modernist design philosophy, Swiss typographic sensibilities, and therefore the function-over-form approach of Bauhaus design. The tools he picked up through this self-education formed the idea for his skillful and innovative use of Swiss Style in his corporate logo designs. One of the more famous Rand quotes is: “Design are often art. Design are often aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it's so complicated.” You can bet that this manner that he viewed graphic design was only opened to him after he went beyond his formal education and augmented it with all of his self-study.

4. Practice Humility

You may be the foremost educated graphic designer, whether from formal education or self-study, but the very fact remains that have remains the single-biggest thanks to advance career. Rand understood this well. In spite of his considerable formal education, he started at rock bottom , working a part-time job creating stock pictures for a syndicate that provided graphic designs to the media. Now, some may have balked at this, but Rand realized that he had to start out humbly so as to form it during this industry.

He also put this chance to good use since working these low-paid, early assignments a minimum of helped him build an increasingly impressive portfolio. Interestingly, the portfolio he assembled was unique in its own right: it had been influenced by the German ad aesthetic called “Sackplakat.” This was essentially an early sort of poster art that the Germans came up with within the early 1900s. Here, too, note the influence of European sensibilities on Rand, even when it came to his portfolio style. We’ve also covered the importance of a portfolio to graphic design numerous times on the blog. So if you’re just starting call at your design career, don’t check out your initial, inevitably humble projects as something to discourage you. Instead, look to the masters in your industry like Paul Rand. Realize that they, too, had to start out somewhere. Understand that this is often the method of gaining experience and building your own portfolio, which can be the idea for your own future success at your craft.

5. Brand Yourself

Branding and graphic design go together hand in hand. Successful graphic design will help a brand tell its story and carve out a singular niche in its industry. Rand was a student of branding, and he took this to a completely new level when he decided, early in his career, to form himself into a brand.

How did he do this?

Well, for starters, Paul Rand was actually born Peretz Rosenbaum in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents. Dreaming of creating it big on Madison Avenue—which was synonymous with the American ad industry within the 1920s and for several decades thereafter—Rand changed his name to form it sound slicker, like someone who was already working during a big advertising agency in ny City. Note that he also changed his name so it featured an equal number of characters within the given name and surname. In his mind, having this balance in his name would be symbolic of the type of simplicity his design would convey.

With an easy name change, Rand made himself into his first project on corporate identity. It told potential clients and partners that he was a pointy up-and-comer who understood the messaging and communication dynamics of the ad industry at that point . Rand put it best himself when he stated, “Design is that the silent ambassador of your brand.”

6. Truly shine at What you are doing

At the top of the day, there’s no substitute for sheer talent and producing high-quality work. It’s what is going to get you noticed and cause you to stand out from all of your competitors during a crowded field. Excelling at his craft through diligence and applying himself well, Rand caught the attention of the higher-ups at Esquire Magazine thanks to the work he did in page design, or typesetting, for then-Apparel Arts (now GQ) Magazine. Long story short, Rand distinguished himself together with his immensely creative page layouts that took everyday pictures and turned them into amazing compositions. This aroused giving a page tons of editorial importance and helped it to face out.

His success at page design won him a full-time job, shortly after he had begun as a part-time creator of stock images. It also opened another door for him: Esquire Magazine offered to form him their stage director for all their Esquire-Coronet publications. What’s really staggering here is that Rand was only 22 years old at the time he was offered this prestigious position. Experiencing self-doubt, he initially rejected the offer, but, just a year later, he took the magazine abreast of it and have become Esquire Magazine’s stage director at the ripe adulthood of 23.

7. Share Your Knowledge With Others

As you create your way through your graphic design career, you’ll eventually amass tons of data . While this may naturally assist you land bigger and better clients and projects, also as extra money , it’s also a chance to shape and influence others in your industry via teaching. Rand became Yale University’s professor emeritus of graphic design; he spent a few of decades there in two stints. First, from 1956 to 1969 then again from 1974 to 1985. You obviously don’t need to become a tenured professor to share what you’ve learned with others. because of the interconnectivity of the web , you'll begin teaching in your title with the tools you've got immediately at your disposal.

A lesson on a selected aspect of graphic design are often presented in an explainer video, whether you create it short and to the purpose or an in-depth walkthrough or tutorial. Similarly, you'll use Facebook posts to share your graphic-design knowledge. If you've got your own website, even something as basic as having a newsletter means you'll educate your followers within the finer points of design as well—while building your own brand and becoming an idea leader within the industry. So take some inspiration from Rand when it involves teaching. It can do wonders for your own career, too. As Rand put it: “Everything is design. Everything!” This includes teaching it to others.

8. Get Influential Creatives to ascertain Your Work

No matter what industry you’re in, your career are going to be helped when influencers in your industry start talking you up. this is applicable to graphic design also . This social proof is priceless, and testimonials within the sort of endorsements from authority figures are a surefire thanks to increase your own reputation. While it's going to not always be easy to land these great endorsements, they’re sure worth striving for. one among the foremost surefire ways you, too, can receive influencer praise is by being very, excellent at your craft. In Rand’s case, he received good press early from the likes of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a Bauhaus school professor and artist in his title . pertaining to Rand in Rand’s early career, Moholy-Nagy called him among the simplest and most capable of his new generation…someone ready to design from the standpoint of utility and necessity while still retaining unlimited creativity.

Influencers talked him up right up to Rand’s final moments of life. The late Steve Jobs, of Apple fame, founded a lesser-known computer and software company by the name of NeXT in 1985, after he was forced out of Apple. Yes, Jobs was actually forced out of Apple in its early years before returning to the corporate he originally founded within the late 1990s (when Apple ended up purchasing NeXT). During his exile from Apple, Jobs commissioned Rand to style the company identity for—you guessed it—NeXT. the brand Rand created emphasized his trademark simplicity. In 1996, Jobs would ask Rand because the greatest living graphic designer, shortly before Rand’s death from cancer within the same year.

9. Develop Your Own Design Theory

This lesson could also be the foremost challenging of all, but it proved to be what made Rand stand out from his peers and become an influencer in his field. As you progress in your graphic design career, you’ll be exposed to new ideas, various workflows and processes, and, ultimately, what works for you and what doesn’t, around which you’ll build your own design value system.

It was Rand’s insatiable appetite for reading that helped to shape his design ideology. especially , he devoured books by art philosophers like:

John Dewey

Alfred North Whitehead

Roger Fry

He applied these philosophers’ belief systems into his work as a designer, creating something new entirely, like his belief that a design should be ready to withstand blurring or distortion and still retain its recognizable identity. Rand was also keen on the modernist approach to philosophy. He studied works by artists like Cezanne , famous for his contributions to both Impressionism and Cubism, and Jan Tschichold. As a result, he was ready to see common themes between their artworks and his 20th-century graphic design. Read tons of fabric on design and books, from luminaries within the industry, and you’ll eventually develop your own theories. Rand meant it when he said, “You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will cause you to free.”

10. Don’t Confuse Radically Different With Being Original

One of the gravest mistakes that designers make is to believe that they need to return up with something drastically “new” to be original or somehow make an impression on their works. Nothing might be farther from reality, a minimum of not where Rand was concerned. It was tempting for Rand’s critics to dismiss his designs as being overly simplistic. Though they were all studies in minimalism, that didn’t hold the designs back. Just the other , Rand excelled at mixing and matching simple shapes and colours in completely new ways.

This was seen within the literal translation of the IBM wordmark, like his 1981 poster art for the corporate . it had been also on display within the 1960 Westinghouse logo that relied on simple shapes like circles, line segments, and ovals to make a replacement brand identity for this company. In both cases, Rand went with the familiar—with elements audiences round the world already understood. it had been the execution that made these designs unique and memorable for many years to return.

Apply this to your own career and projects. If you’re faced with a client wanting a bold, new logo that captures the audience’s attention, don’t swing for the fences by incorporating excess and maximalism in your design. That’ll just clutter your composition. Instead, work with less, but make it some extent to use this minimalism in clever ways, a bit like Rand did.

Lessons From the Master

It’s a reasonably big consensus that graphic design wouldn’t exist today as an industry if Paul Rand didn’t revolutionize it with the way he checked out aesthetics. By broadening his horizons and absorbing (at the time) esoteric knowledge from Europe, he succeeded in setting the course for a way American and worldwide graphic design took shape.

[aion-rsa]

The Many Obstacles of Mulan

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Disney’s move to premiere Mulan exclusively on Disney+ sent shock waves through the movie exhibition industry, but it’s only one of the potential obstacles that has beleaguered this eagerly anticipated film from the onset. From its production announcement to its premiere, Mulan has faced more trials and tribulations than any other film this year, and that’s a pretty competitive category in 2020. The pandemic has been just one hurdle for Mulan, a “Chinese-assisting” American production being released in the midst of rising tensions between the two superpowers. From rumors of whitewashing to issues of cultural appropriation to political boycotts, here is a breakdown of the controversies and challenges Mulan has had to deal with and/or anticipate in the lead up to its release…

Mulan’s Shifting Release Date & Plan

Even before COVID-19 reared its ugly head, Mulan endured an ever-moving release date. (Which, to be fair, is not so uncommon these days when it comes to major Hollywood blockbusters.) Originally fast-tracked for a 2018 release, Mulan was then postponed to late 2019, then delayed once more to 2020. In 2020, Mulan was slated for a March 27th wide release, and even held a star-studded Hollywood premiere at the Dolby Theater on March 9th. But only a few days after that premiere, the pandemic shut down theaters worldwide, forcing Disney to delay Mulan further.

Disney tried to rally by rescheduling the theatrical release for July 24th, but, as the severity of the pandemic grew, that date too had to be pushed to August 21st, a date that was later unset in late July. Early this August, Mulan’s release was moved to VOD on Disney+ for an additional fee of $30 (prices vary slightly internationally) on September 4th. The announcement rattled many fans, who not only felt the fee was too expensive but had hoped to see it on the big screen. The announcement also hit the already-suffering movie distribution market hard, particularly in the UK, where theaters have begun to reopen and where movie theaters are eager for any big film that might bring audiences back and revitalize their industry.

The Complications of Mulan Courting the Chinese Box Office

From its inception, the $200 million tent-pole has aspired to be one of the biggest global blockbusters of 2020. Based on the performance of previous live action remakes, Disney no doubt hopes for a $85-90 million U.S. opening weekend. What’s more, Hollywood makes up to 70% of its revenue overseas, which makes the Chinese box office, the second most profitable film market in the world, a major target for any contemporary big-budget release. In 2018, Hollywood movies earned $3.2 billion in China, with Disney taking home $700 million. Last year, Avengers: Endgame earned $614 million in China under the Disney banner. And, after all, Mulan is a Chinese legend. To cater to the market, the film stacked the cast with Chinese A-listers and veteran stars like Cheng Pei-Pei, Gong Li, Jet Li, and Donnie Yen. It was a calculated gamble, but the odds of a huge payout were favorable. (That was until the world drew that unexpected COVID-19 card and all bets for all movies were off.)

But Disney has an uphill battle to fight when it comes to convincing Chinese audiences that it knows how to make a good adaptation of the Mulan legend. Although the 1998 animated film was a successful commerical blockbuster, earning over $304 million as well as winning several Annie Awards and receiving some Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, in China, the film was a complete flop. After Disney’s The Lion King became one of the highest grossing Hollywood films to be released in China at the time, Disney had high hopes for Mulan. However, while Mulan is a beloved Chinese legend that dates to the 6th century, the Chinese audience felt that Disney’s version was too westernized. To them, Disney’s Mulan did not even look Chinese.

When the Mulan trailer dropped in China, it got 1.5 billion views in just a few days, but also some criticism. The trailer showed that the film depicts Mulan’s home as a tulou, a traditional round house from southern China during the Ming Dynasty. The Ming period was about a millennium later than Mulan’s time and, as she was a northerner, she would not have lived in such a house. Disney, despite the apparent efforts to court Chinese audiences, was called out again for its insensitivity to Chinese culture.  In mid-August, an official poster released in China was mocked online for appearing dated and ugly.

Hollywood Whitewashing Concerns

When the Mulan reboot was announced, the film drew immediate concerns of whitewashing. At the time, Ghost in the Shell, a live-action adaptation of the beloved Japanese manga series, was in production with Scarlett Johansson in the lead role, and was drawing significant criticism from the Asian-American community for its casting of Johansson, a white actress, for a story that takes place in Japan and, in its original form, features all Japanese characters. The casting was only the latest example in Hollywood’s long history of whitewashing.

Following the announcement that Mulan would be getting a live-action reboot, concerns that Hollywood would choose to whitewash the central roles soon followed online. There was even a hoax report announcing that Scarlett herself was cast as Mulan. Rumors circulated that a white male lead would be introduced, based on an alleged leaked script written by Lauren Hynek and Elizabeth Martin, spurring fans to launch the hashtag #MakeMulanRight. To its credit, Mulan has an entirely Asian cast, including Chinese-born American actress Crystal Liu Yifei (best known to Hollywood for her role in the Jackie Chan and Jet Li film The Forbidden Kingdom) in the lead role.

Mulan Eschews the Disney Reboot Formula

Mulan is an outlier in the current era of live action Disney reboots in that it is not afraid to make significant changes in both format and content from its animated source material. This hasn’t come without criticism, of course, especially as most of the Disney reboot era so far has catered toward nostalgia viewing. The live-action Mulan will not be a musical, a decision that caused many fans of the animated original to express disappointment when the announcement was made. Additionally, it became clear during marketing that the new film would not feature some of the cherished characters from the original, such as Mushu and Cri-kee. Some in the LGBTQ community criticized the removal of Li Shang, a character who is sometimes interpreted as bisexual because of his attraction to Ping (Mulan, disguised as a man). It’s worth noting that these are the characters that were rejected by Chinese audiences, and that they were added to the Mulan legend for the original animated Disney version.  

The #BoycottMulan Controversy

Late last year, Crystal Liu Yifei came under fire for her pro-police politics. Crystal has 65 million followers on the Chinese platform Weibo and posted the hashtag #IAlsoSupportTheHongKongPolice. This upset Hong Kongers protesting for democratic reforms (and pro-democracy sympathizers around the world) who started the hashtag #BoycottMulan. The controversy spilled over to Facebook and Twitter, resulting in the deletion of nearly a thousand troll accounts. (Note that both Facebook and Twitter are blocked by mainland China’s Great Firewall.) Since the initial controversy, other Chinese celebrities have voiced their support for Beijing, including Jackie Chan and Crystal’s Mulan co-star Donnie Yen.  

Meanwhile, in the United States, anti-Asian racism is on the rise. Following the President’s labeling of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and amidst the general fraying of American-Chinese political relations, there has been an uptick in anti-Chinese sentiment in America. In March, a promotional Mulan poster at a bus stop in Pasadena, California was vandalized. It’s unclear, at this point, what role if any the current political climate could play in Mulan‘s performance.

Read more

Movies

Mulan and Tenet Show Competing Visions for Future of Movies

By David Crow

TV

Disney+ New Releases: September 2020

By Alec Bojalad

On September 4, Mulan will play in theaters in regions where Disney+ is not available, such as Singapore and Malaysia. Like with the U.K., China’s theaters have already reopened, as the country has contained the pandemic more successfully than the U.S. Mulan has been approved for Chinese release, but the date has not been formally announced at the time of this writing. This will put it head-to-head against the other major 2020 Hollywood blockbuster, Tenet, which has been and will be released theatrically in 70 countries, including China and in limited capacity in the U.S. 

Time will tell if Disney’s Premium Access VOD will succeed. Regardless, Mulan looks to be a panoramic big screen experience, so hopefully it will get shown in theaters someday. Whatever happens, in the larger picture, Disney’s production is just the latest chapter for Mulan, whose tale of overcoming obstacles has inspired for centuries.

Mulan premieres on Disney+ on September 4.

The post The Many Obstacles of Mulan appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[mrhotmaster]

Fitbit Versa 2 Full Detailed & Honest Review

Fitbit Versa 2 Detailed Review

  Have you been hunting for this reasonably priced smartwatch?

Fitbit, the American wellness wearables organization that was as of late procured by Google, faces a genuine test from Chinese rivals in India. While Fitbit has been around for much longer than its adversaries, that doesn't ensure accomplishment in the market. Organizations, for example, Amazfit have propelled a few items in the course of the most recent year, a large portion of which offer a larger number of highlights and cost not exactly Fitbit items. No item is going to feel the warmth as much as the Fitbit Versa 2, since it is one of the most costly of the organization's wearables in India. Could the Versa 2 interpretation of the solid challenge? Just now, how about we explore.

Fitbit Versa 2 Plan

The Fitbit Versa 2 has a square face with adjusted corners. The shading AMOLED touchscreen looks extremely pleasant yet its thick bezels cause it to seem somewhat dated. That is not incredible for a superior wellness wearable. We had no bad things to say with the presentation itself however — it can get entirely brilliant, and hues look decent on it as well. You can set the presentation to consistently on in the Versa 2's settings, however this bigly affects battery life. We'll discuss that in the exhibition segment. The Versa 2 is very agreeable to wear. Its aluminum shell feels decent, and the band is additionally very agreeable by and large. We had the option to wear the Versa 2 for different days without an issue, and we took it off just to charge or to get dry after an exercise or a shower. There's only one catch on the left half of the Versa 2 — on the off chance that you press it once it goes about as a back catch, and in the event that you long-press it, it will dispatch the activity application. There's an amplifier on the right, since the Versa 2 backings Amazon's Alexa voice associate. Presently that Fitbit has been obtained by Google, we can be sensibly sure that future Fitbit items will highlight Google Assistant what's more or.

The Versa 2 is swim-verification, which is an absolute necessity have include at this value point. It ships with an exclusive charging support which is somewhat disillusioning to see yet not so much astounding given Fitbit's history of transportation another charger with pretty much every new item. The support has a clasp like system that you need to space the Versa 2 into. The issue is that there are charging pins on just one side, however the watch can without much of a stretch be embedded the incorrect path around accidentally. Except if you check to ensure the Versa 2 is in the support the correct way, the gadget probably won't charge by any means.

Fitbit Versa 2 Execution And Battery Life

For an exceptional wellness watch that underpins a great deal of exercise modes, it's very pitiful to see that the Versa 2 doesn't include in-constructed GPS. You should utilize your combined cell phone's GPS sensors to follow exercises with the Versa 2, which implies the Fitbit application will consistently require get to your area, regardless of whether it's dynamic or not. This raises protection concerns, and despite the fact that Fitbit is a notable brand, we're not enthusiastic about permitting applications access to our area information when they're out of sight. Also, you'll generally need to convey your cell phone with you when you need to follow exercises, which may be badly arranged. At long last, we're presently utilizing a cell phone that is 3.5 years old and its battery life isn't that extraordinary any longer. Utilizing GPS continually is a colossal channel on power. We despite everything ran our standard arrangement of tests on the Versa 2 to check how it performs. First we strolled 1,000 stages while checking every one physically to check whether the Versa 2's progression tracker is exact. The Versa 2 logged 1,006 stages, which is amazingly exact. We likewise strolled 1km on a course estimated utilizing a vehicle's odometer to check for GPS precision. The Fitbit Versa 2 logged 1.05km here, however it's to be noticed this is the combined telephone's GPS precision and shouldn't be utilized to pass judgment on the wearable itself.  The pulse sensor of the Fitbit Versa 2 is genuinely exact. Its readings compared with how tired we were feeling during exercises, which is acceptable to see. You can likewise follow a lot of different exercises, for example, swimming, running, curved preparing, yoga, and so forth on the Versa 2, which is acceptable to see. We'll discuss the product finally in a piece.

We wore the Fitbit Versa 2 during that time to check whether rest following was solid, and we were satisfied to see that it was. The application relegates a rest score to disclose to you how well you dozed, and we saw this measurement as accommodating. Our rest scores reflected how we thought we had dozed. The battery life of the Fitbit Versa 2 was excellent when we didn't empower the consistently in plain view alternative. The gadget effortlessly kept going us an entire week on a solitary charge, with warnings empowered and with us wearing the gadget practically 24x7. This is acceptable, however on the off chance that you do need a consistently in plain view, the battery life drops to two days, which is very poor. It is pleasant to have the option to see significant data, for example, the time and battery level initially, so the drop in battery life is somewhat of a setback.

Fitbit Versa 2 Programming And Partner Application

The Fitbit Versa 2 is a genuinely competent smartwatch yet there are a few things that you ought to know about. You can reply or reject approaching calls on the Versa 2, however you can't make calls from it. It underpins fast answers for notices, however just on Android. You can likewise move music from your PC to the Versa on the off chance that you need to store melodies on-gadget (up to around 2.5GB), or you can utilize music gushing administrations, for example, Spotify or Deezer on the watch, which is incredible to see. The absolute most significant applications for a wearable, for example, Spotify and Strava, are accessible in the Fitbit application store. Aside from a couple of huge names however, there isn't a lot to download there. This is a minor protest to be straightforward, in light of the fact that a great many people are going to purchase the Versa 2 for wellness related highlights and it has nearly all that you'll require on that front. While the Versa 2 backings Amazon's Alexa and permits you to check the climate, set clocks, and control your Echo gadgets, we didn't end up utilizing this component much. Voice aide support is an unquestionable requirement have include on looks for certain individuals, however not every person.

The Fitbit partner application is among the best wellness applications we've utilized. It's smooth and shows all the data you need by means of all around structured graphs, which is incredible. It's likewise pleasant to have the option to share Fitbit information with your companions or Fitbit people group individuals by means of the Community tab. There's a Fitbit Premium membership alternative, evaluated at Rs. 819 every month or Rs. 7,000 every year, that incorporates wellbeing reports, programs for teaching solid propensities, video exercises, and the sky is the limit from there. On the off chance that you need an application to mentor you, this is a not too bad choice, yet there are a few different applications that could all the more likely serve your wellness preparing necessities and you can discover comparable highlights at lower costs or in any event, for nothing.

Decision

The Fitbit Versa 2 looks decent, feels incredible to wear, and has a solid friend application. These are for the most part great highlights to have, yet the absence of in-manufactured GPS confines its utility a ton. For an excellent wellness gadget, this is a glaring oversight.

The Versa 2 has been pushed at Rs. 20,999 in India yet is as of now accessible for around Rs. 15,000 on the web. Indeed, even at this lower value, wearables, for example, the Amazfit Verge offer better worth. This model has a comparative list of capabilities alongside in-fabricated GPS, however not a similar degree of programming shine. In-your-face wellness fans will need to dish out more for wellness watches from Garmin or TomTom, and obviously iPhone clients should consider the Apple Watch Series 3 at this value level. There's a great deal to like about the Fitbit Versa 2, however the challenge is a lot more grounded now than it was when Fitbit first came to India. The organization should raise its game to remain applicable in the top notch wellness watch space.

REVIEWS

⓼

DESIGNS

⓻

TRACKING RATE

⓺

SOFTWARE

⓻

BATTERY

✔GOOD

✘BAD

☞ Great Looks

☞ Great App Design

☞ Water Proof

☞ Nice Display

☞ Lacks GPS

☞ App Ecosystem Needs Improvement

☞Battery Life Is Not Good With Always On-Display

☞ Slightly Larger Price

☞ Inappropriate Charger

KEY SPECIFICATIONS

COMPATIBLE OS

Android, iOS

DISPLAY

AMOLED

IDEAL FOR

UNISEX

DIAL SHAPE

Square

STRAP COLOR

Black, Stone, Bordeaux, Emerald

BUY AT

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[jaypakrhe]

It is my proud privilege to introduce you to Ms. Suparnaa Chadda, (also Better known as Simply Suparnaa) was a chance interaction on Linkedin like many others we interact with every day; but this one was different.

Suparnaa not only reached out by email, but she also followed up with telephonic conversations and that generated the trust which one does not always get from Online social media networking.k I found her work interesting. She offered me to associate and come to Delhi – even be a Judge for the contests, which I had to politely decline due to health-related travel restrictions.

After her landmark event last year, I approached her and asked whether I can do your profile and interview on my new blog http://www.parkhe.com which is generating over 1.5 Lakh views and traction and my reader a tribe may be of use to her in her social enterprise. I was afraid, she may say no, as she is a very well world-renowned TV broadcaster and interviewer. It is thus a pleasure and honor to introduce her here with my network.

  So who is Simply Suparnaa? The Simply Suparnaa Media Network consciously works towards creating a positive narrative for the nation. #LikeaBoss documents the wisdom of leaders & #SABERA Awards recognize good. The network stands for causes enabling gender sensitivity as promoted by womanendangered.org

Suparnaa Chadda is a seasoned professional with over 19 years of experience in media, advertising, television, radio, print, events and now the World Wide Web. Her young venture #LikeaBoss is a web series that documents the wisdom of leaders for future leaders. She is also the curator of SABERA – The Social and Business Enterprise Responsible Awards & Summit. The event acknowledges Business & Social Enterprises along with individuals working responsibly in putting the Nation on the road to development. What does Suparna Do? At the start of her career she was critically acclaimed for her documentary on the aftermath of the Kashmir quake and also won the title of the 'Top controversial Blogger' through a competition hosted by BBC WST and Communication Initiative website. She has also covered development stories as the India Correspondent for Radio Netherlands Worldwide. A published author, she has put together an anthology of stories from her ancestral journal Biswin Sadi, on the pre and post partition era with=Harper, Collins.

What does Suparnaa Stand for? What advocacy does she do? An avid gender equity activist, she conducts menstrual hygiene workshops in slums & institutions. As the curator of Media, Marketing and Advertising Awards, she successfully introduced gender equitable categories in 4 award shows, recognizing brands and campaigns that are gender sensitive.

With a deep interest in the laws of the Spirit, today Suparnaa connects the dots between Leadership and Spirituality.

The Interview with Simply Suparnaa is as follows:

1. What motivated you to become what you ARE today? The sum total of my Life’s experiences make me who I am today.

2. What is the greatest joy you get from what you do? A sense of purpose and the fact that I can do my Guru, my Mother and my Daughter proud.

3. What do your fans mean to you? Kindred souls who are my brand ambassadors

4. What are you working on next? The next edition of SABERA

5. Who are your favorite authors? At the moment all of my reading is focussed on learning ‘shastras’. For the past year] have been formally learning to interpret/understand the ‘Sankhya Shastra’ as explained by my Guru so you can say the answer to this question would be ‘Kapila Muni’ one of the revered ‘sapt rishis’ and the author of the ‘Sankhya Shastra’.

6. What inspires you to get out of bed each day? A new day to learn.

7. When you’re not working, how do you spend your time? As of now am addicted to playing Ludo 😉 I love listening to music, dancing and exploring knowledge.

8. Do you have some work and rest related non-negotiable rules? No calls of work post evening or on weekends

9. How do you discover the authors you read? Through the years before kindle, the books seemed to call out themselves through the bookshelves in stores. Kindle that way has dampened that experience

10. Do you remember the first assignment you ever did?

My internship which was a terrible experience on many levels, as interns were/are considered laborers without/minimal compensation. It further damaged to know being a girl meant being an easy target for sexual predators at the workplace.

11. What is your working process? Immersing myself with pleasant music playing in the background to keep me continually engaged in the process.

12. What is your unique Work Style? Approaching a situation with common sense above all.

13. Do you remember the first story you ever read and the impact it had on you? I remember my first full-fledged novel ‘Fountainhead’ by Ayn Rand. It had a profound effect on my personality. Resonating the rebellion that I was.

14. What is your approach and how do you Plan the Finishing touches to the work? Ideate, Conceptualise, execute and review.

15. What are your five favorite books, and why? Living with the Himalayan masters- Sri Swami Rama, Aghora- The left hand of God- Robert Svoboda, Fakir- Ruzbeh Barucha, Jonathon Livingstone- The Seagull- Bach

16. What do you read for pleasure? All books impart knowledge, when am lazy (which is a lot) I watch vidoes

17. What is your e-reading device of choice? My mum gifted me a kindle a few years ago – its great to travel with but the pleasure of holding a book is lost. 18. Please describe your desk. Have been working on my Mac Book Air and the portable breakfast table for the last couple years.

19. Where did you grow up, and did this influence your business, If Yes – How? Am a Delhi girl all the way. But don’t align, confine or believe in the stereotype.

20. When did you first started what you do? Playing giving pretend interviews while on my school bus !!

Meet Simply Suparnaa and Her wonderful creation Sabera! It is my proud privilege to introduce you to Ms. Suparnaa Chadda, (also Better known as Simply Suparnaa) 

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

+Burnt Toast

>>>>"So, are you a combat veteran?" No.  Not that I see any relevance to this.<<<<

Thank you for this response., It took courage to make yourself vulnerable in this manner, knowing that I would use it as a weapon against you in our dialogue.

That wasn't my intent. Christianity is all about vulnerability. That is exactly the feature of the ministry of Jesus a Catholic crucifix illustrates.

Devotion to Duty, in the military sense of the word, is all about vulnerability.  

When you are sworn in for jury duty or to provide testimony, you make yourself vulnerable to sanction by the rule of law for misconduct. Faith is not the absence of logic or rational self-interest.  It is a paradox: it is enlightened self-interest arising from confronting an existential threat with vulnerability.

Voluntarily.

Absent divine coercion, With complete consciousness and deliberate intent. It is. as Christopher Hitchens was wont to rant, it is taking no heed for the morrow purposefully.

In many cases, it requires self-sacrifice in a manner which violates Ayn Rand's organizing prinicle, the Virtue of Selfishness (although she would make the case that, in fact, mindful self-sacrifice actually validates the Virtue of Selfishness).

Now, I agree with you completely: an atheist/anti-theist can embrace this enlightened self-interest. Also, as you point out, I am sure that soldier-atheists do it all the time and receive awards for their valor. The fact that this fulfills Jesus' second great law, Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself, and the impulse of John 15:13, I won't construe it as a tacit, albeit existential, embrace of Christian doctrine. It is that Christian doctrine is The One's submission to humanity through the atonement of Jesus and this Second Great Commandment is the most practical application of God's Will.

Jesus was the first Secular Humanist, an irony completely lost on American Evangelical Christians.   The fact the you are or aren't a combat vet is really meaningless to me, generally (obviously, there are elements of that experience available to me which inform my inquiry into the Gospel of Mark and other aspect of my life).

The fact is that admitting your status, one way or another, required an intentional violation of what you regard as rational self-interest. It was not a matter of indifference. It was sufficiently un-important to your personal protocols of dialogue to object to its elevation, however miniscule, to a subject for the public arena. I am willing to endorse your decision as an act of courage, however slight it may seem to you.

Life requires courage. Faith, in the Christian sense, is a continual act of courage beyond the boundaries of what may seem purely rational self-interest and prudent investment. Starting a business is an act of faith based on one's trust in their own abilities and hope for unseen future benefits. Christianity is the hope that one's personal capabilities applied in the present moment within the context of a larger human enterprise will result in both present and future benefits.

The Kingdom of God occurs at the tips of our fingers. As the Shakers say, Heart to God, Hands to Work. I happen to agree with Ayn Rand that altruism is the other side of the coin of Ego from selfishness, but, as a social doctrine (and evolutionary choice) altruism is the better bet, However, Christianity is not a choice for altruism over selfishness, but an expression of the Generosity of Spirit reflected in John 15:13 and the culture of the infantry combat team:

μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ..

Here is my confession to you. I do know The One in the manner I describe, but I came to know Him by accident. I didn't seek Him out and, to be frank, if this encounter had not happened, I'd probably agree with you, chapter and verse, regarding the improbability of the proposition. The current exercise in Christian apologetics are essentially legal arguments emerging from the doctrine of Solo Scriptura that is completely unconvincing to me. Being verbally nimble with formalistic argument has no more veracity in my mind than your arguments for your sentiments.  

The biggest danger to the body of Christ in America is, in my mind, is Solo Scriptura which, like the overwealming Evangelical vote for Trump, part of the Jesus, Inc, business model that is little different, in kind, from the commercial interests which motivated the Temple priests of Jerusalem who engineered the crucifixion of Jesus. In that regards, you and I are joined in a common cause, but by different means. And, except for this encounter with The One in 1954, I wouldn't be a Christian.

But I did have this encounter and I do know God. I don't know Jesus but I believe on good authority He is exactly who He says He is. But my perspective on His life, as recorded in the Gospels isn't informed  as a Christian Pharisee, but from the anthropological perspective of the pagan Cornelius. I was raised in a community of centurions and the spiritual advisors of my youth were all combat veterans and, in reprospect, I intuitively recognized that they had a similar relationship with The One that I have, a relationship I intuitively find missing in virtually the entire Evangelical pastorage.

That's an unfair generalization, perhaps. but in 1966, when my fraternity roommate got involved with Campus Crusade for Christ and put a great deal of pressure on me to accept Jesus as my personal savior, it took a long conversation with The One to finally make this declaration because I sensed the core fraud of the movement (God eventually convinced me to make Bill happy by, first, saying it was OK to declare, and then sort of reverse engineering Mark 9:37: if I know God, I know the Son, to demonstrate that it wouldn't be a false affirmation. It was important to me to avoid a false affirmation).

Rev. Dr. Francis Wade, Interim Dean of the National Cathedral, is virutally the only civilian preacher whose interpretation of the Gospels reflects my experience growing up in the Army Protestant Chapel. It turns out he was educated at The Citadel. Some of his sermons are on YouTube.

I didn't initiate my inquiry into the Gospel of Mark as part of a crusade to reform Solo Scriptura. My personal meditations on scripture probably verge on heresy in some quarters and are not orthodox once you get past NT Wright's proposition that Paul's epistemology represents a new way of knowing (which is completely sound doctrine regardless of the rising criticism from American Evangelicals who recognize the threat to their business model). Those heresies are not important here, but in 1990, I was teaching Sunday School to high school students and I was concerned that I contain my instruction completely within the boundaries of orthodox Episcopal doctrine. A chance remark by the Superintendent of Sunday School education, Rev, Caroline Pyle, made me begin to review the Gospels beyond my cursory survey of the literature of the Bible from college.

I began to work my way through William Barclay's commentaries and, in reading his introduction to the Gospel of Mark, I had an epiphany that Cornelius was the author of Mark.  

And it's been a hobby ever since. It has never been a crusade, but, as I say, Carrier's subordination of the literature of the Bible to his post-Hegelian historical deconstruction offends me and here we are, today. The value to me of this particular forum is that the objections raised have led me, in partnership with the Holy Spirit, to the probable scenario for the creation of Mark.

From the beginning of this inquiry until quite recently, I assumed Mark was a covert publication but, as my understanding of the larger Roman context deepened (thanks in no small measure to the series of lectures by Bruce Gore on the historical context of the Bible, as well as even Carrier's lectures), it has become apparent that Mark is a product of the Roman military establishment in response to the singular nature of the Resurrection and the events leading up to and resulting from its occasion.

In the final analysis, Christianity is a Roman invention, with the Gospel of Matthew the outlier composed specifically to sabotage (through "Judaizers") the wholesale proliferation of the Gospels beyond the boundaries of Jewish "kosher" doctrine. I've never been a fan of Paul's, but, in terms of the selling of Jesus, he recognized the huge marketing opportunity of the generally god-sensitive Roman empire and which the abrogation of all things Kosher in Acts 10 made possible.

But a review of that inquiry is not the purpose of this commentary, but an expression of sincere gratitude for revealing publically your personal resume contrary to your instincts to withhold the information. It was an act of faith and good will,

Thank you.

[wallsarecrumbling]

#the whooooole point is that he's not a hero and the fact that everyone expects him to be all the time is really hard on him#especially as he's settling in to this new version of himself#i am just some Fucking guy i make mistakes i have flaws you should not idolize me#which is directly antithetical to a lot of stuff in 11's era#in a way that i really love#also ''dark'' is not. how i would describe 12's personality in a thousand years#he has dark MOMENTS like every other doctor does#but the marketing at the time and the initial fan interpretation of the series caused a lot of people to misunderstand his character arc#and his personality; even to this day#almost ten years later

so many people completely miss the point of the doctor's character arc in series 8 it's nuts. it's not about him being a "darker" or more morally ambiguous version of the character. the doctor has ALWAYS been morally ambiguous; that is a consistent character trait across all regenerations. it's about him feeling crushed under the pressure of an expectation of him to be a "hero", and the culmination of this arc is him saying onscreen "i am Literally Just a Guy and you should treat me as such"