#compel me to consume one topic obsessively and that topic never has been and never will be romantic.

[raspberryjellybrains]

every time a complex and nuanced story that happens to contain a romantic subplot that contributes to the overall themes and ultimate narrative gets boiled down to nothing but a shadow of the single, actual romantic dynamic to be copy pasted into a series of tropes an angel dies.

[sashayed]

have you heard that jordan peele said steven yeun's character is the one that has the most in common with him. have you thought about how most of his cinematic career has been built around discussions of race and the traumas that come from racism. have you thought about how any media handling real and personal topics is a sort of emotional self-disembowelment on the part of the creator. have you thought of the glory and horror of being Seen. have you screamed

Have I? HAVE i. Have I thought about how Peele has discussed being objectified and tokenized on set, especially early in his career? Have I thought about what it's like to suffer real-life trauma in a space created for make-believe? Buddy, I haven't thought about anything else for days!!

I think one thing that makes this movie so visceral to me is that it's an exploration by a great popular artist on the human cost of making popular art. To me, the connection between Peele and Jupe is a link between the auteur and the cult leader — both are people consumed & defined by stories, people who are compelled by a narrative and feel an urge to spread that narrative to an audience.

And I am really impressed by how hard Peele seems to work to reject the cult leader in himself as best he can — to make art that enriches the lives of ALL THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT. Every interview is about how collaborative and present he is as a director. Obsessed with this Q&A for many reasons but this moment sticks with me:

KEKE PALMER: There would be moments where we’re going through different parts of this script, this story, from when we first rehearsed to when we were actually on set, or when we had an idea that happened that morning. I would be listening, my head would be down, I’d be listening to what Jordan’s saying, I’m like, man this is deep. And I look up and there’d be just this one little tear falling. Man, this brother’s deep. JORDAN PEELE: I’m not afraid to cry as a director. KP: And he’s chill! He’d be like, “That’s what happens” and tears are falling. I’m like, “Are you all right?” But he keeps going and he’s like “Yeah, yeah. So that’s the thing.” And then he just walks out.

To me, that reads as a person who is NOT JUST super smart and deep and creative etc but who is also aware every moment of how lucky he is to be doing what he's doing, and who is not ashamed of his own reaction to that gratitude. What's to be ashamed of? It's incredibly fun! He is having an amazing time! He's hanging out with people he likes and respects and coating actors with goop in the esophageal tube! What a job!

I wonder if, to be that thankful and that aware (and that collaborative), you have to have experienced the flip side; if you have to have been Jupe, at least for a little while. I wonder if the process of -- to some extent -- commodifying your own suffering (as capitalism practically demands that artists do in order to survive as artists) leads, almost inevitably, to a moment where you think, "I survived this horror and became a Star because I am the main character of reality: I am more special than other people, I have a special ability to communicate, I have a special destiny." That is a powerful story and a seductive one, but if you don't leave it behind, it will eat you and the people around you alive.

It seems to me like an extension of what Peele is exploring in Us--the notion that your contentment is entangled with someone else's suffering. Why you? Why not the person with all your qualities who for whatever reason never ended up where you are? Especially for creators with marginalized identities, right? "Am I occupying a space that should belong to someone else?" You can avoid that question by deciding that you have special individual qualities that make you the Chosen One, as Jupe does. Or you can accept that the question will always haunt you, that luck (LUCKY THE FINAL HORSE??) has no logic, and you try to spread your luck out and open your space up to as many other people as you can. Which you see Peele doing all the time! Gah!!

[pidgecv]

early morning ramblings///

posting this for funsies

pidge talks about romance as horror for far too long and makes no sense in the process 2024 colorized

relationships as a vessel for psychological horror has always been something that fascinates me. take killing stalking for example. a viscerally disgusting and terrible work of horror fiction that i honestly find really compelling conceptually. now did SOME of the fandom™️ completely miss the point and just go “omg yaoi” yes, they did. and yeah the story is like,, not my thing exactly in execution i didn’t finish the comic itself. im not the biggest fan of gore and it crossed my personal line into shock horror (got a bit too into the wrong kind of uncomfortable) but it’s all preference. however, the inherent horror of things like stockholm syndrome, or the idea of a frankenstein being infatuated with his monster not because of who they are but because he made them are both SO interesting. imagine a person loving someone who they have manipulated and abused past the point of humanity. not romantically necessarily (though yeah that’s totally a thing, that all-consuming fascination being misunderstood as a sick romance) rather like a personal project they’re absolutely obsessed with. their creation. except that creation has feelings as well. or maybe in extreme cases, used to at least. problem is it’s difficult to write platonically, since a lot of that stuff can come off as romanticizing abuse and it’s a very delicate topic. deffo easier to have someone eat their own arm and call it a day. going back to stockholm syndrome, in a way it’s a removal of agency (which is a staple of horror media lol). so the horror could be applied both ways, the obsessed and the obsession. the monster and its twisted creator. the inhuman and the inhumane. idk it’s just so damn interesting. it gets complicated and tricky to pull off, but horror doesn’t mix well with cut corners. i may try and expand on this sort of idea but in a far less extreme way for the swapverse. absolutely nothing romantic, in fact i headcanon (or i guess canon?) both versions of cleo as aroace (fully, not just somewhere in the middle of the aroace spectrum but completely disinterested in romance and sex repulsed) ((mostly just wanted to explore familial and platonic bonds without having to consider any sort of romantic stuff)) (((yes s!cleo had a boyfriend pre apox. it was qpr, they were both aroace but were besties for the resties and were gonna marry for tax purposes))). but i’d love to pull off a platonic obsession. jo would absolutely obsess over her work. she would be so proud of herself for creating cleo. living (debatably) proof of her skill. her magnum opus. every success of cleo’s is actually jos, but also every failure is taken the same way. jo sees it as her own failure, and takes out that selfish anger on cleo or even V sometimes. cleo struggles with her humanity. she was one of the first infected. not patient 0, but one of the first. early enough to have been institutionalized and studied at least. and jo has twisted her memories so much that cleo doesn’t know anything about herself except that she belongs to jo. she’s property, a dangerous weapon. that’s what makes their deaths so poetic. jo dies at the hands of V, through her own weapon. because while cleo hit the detonator, it was V who rigged the bomb. Cleo and jo depend on each other so much. the way you need the sword to cut but the sword needs you to polish. to sharpen. even to forge. of course V is the only one who survives. cleo was never going to be able to live without jo and vice versa. they weren’t friends. they weren’t family. they were something else entirely, something torturous and hateful and tragic. a dynamic of lies and manipulation and cruelty. they died as they lived, together. while the original final lives cast was threatened by the new world, they managed to overcome it by being a team. in the swapverse, the outside world was never the threat. they dominated the apocalypse, thriving compared to the og crew. but they were torn apart from the inside, and they couldn’t overcome it. yet another reflection of the original cast. i was gonna type more but hit tumblr limit goodnight fazgang

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

More Female Characters to Avoid in Your Writing

A long while back, I typed up some posts ranting about characters and tropes I disliked.  These were Male and Female Characters to Avoid in Your Writing, and they’ve become my most popular posts yet.  Recently, I was struck by some topical inspiration, and decided it was time for a sequel!  

One again, these are my personal, subjective opinions!  No one dictates your writing or portrayals but you, and no one can or should decide how you consume fiction.  Also, as you may notice, I actually like most of the ladies below;  I just don’t like certain aspects of their portrayal.

Enjoy, and happy writing everybody! 

1.  The Daenerys (i.e. the spontaneous war criminal)

Image source

Who she is:

The formerly heroic Mother of Dragons, who randomly charbroiled a city full of innocent people.

Why it sucks:

I’m not even talking about this from a feminist standpoint, or how one of the most consistently heroic and powerful female characters took an abrupt and undignified backflip into the Dark Side.  I’m speaking from a writer’s standpoint.  

Regardless of whether you liked Daenerys, she was rivaled only by Jon and Brienne as the show’s most consistently heroic character  From locking away her dragon children to ensure the safety of her subjects, to freeing countless enslaved citizens, she’s spent a decade proving herself to be an altruistic and noble figure.  And then, in the final two episodes of the entire show, the writers dracarys-ed that shit.

For some comparison, just imagine how ridiculous it would be if Jon Snow suddenly went batshit and started hacking up citizens because he was feeling stressed.  That’s about as plausible as Dany’s sudden passion for genocide.

And for the record, I’m not opposed to Daenerys becoming Mad Queen.  If it was done properly. This would mean informing the actress far in advance so she could modify her portrayal accordingly (which they didn’t), and building up to it through foreshadowing and established attributes.  Not at the last fucking minute.

Honestly, the only characters who remained narratively consistent to the very end are Drogon and Ghost, who are both precious babies who did nothing wrong.  

How to avoid her:

Decide as early as possible where a character arc is going.  Contrary to what Game of Thrones seems to believe, the character arc is important.  It should have a beginning, challenges that incite development, and a satisfying conclusion that showcases how a character has changed and evolved.  

And if you didn’t decide early?  You still have to come up with a conclusion that makes sense for your character, and not slap on the most unexpected ending possible in the name of Subverting Expectations.

On that note?  Subverting expectations isn’t always a good thing, and a reader predicting your ending isn’t the worst possible outcome.  Focus on telling a good story.  

2.  The Rayon (i.e. the transgender stereotype)

Who she is:

A transgender woman (portrayed by the male, cisgender Jared Leto) dying slowly of AIDS in Dallas Buyer’s Club.  Her role in the narrative is to teach the supposedly heterosexual (more on that later) main character that queer people are human beings.  

Why it sucks:

Rayon is many things in Buyer’s Club, and most are firmly rooted in stereotypes.  She’s a sassy, flirtatious, clothing-obsessed, self-loathing, drug-addicted prostitute.   She’s hypersexual, but never treated as romantically desirable.  She’s tragic, but also one of the few consistently comedic characters in an otherwise bleak film. 

It’s her job to gently goad the main character into treating her with basic respect, but he never quite gets there.  He refers to her with male pronouns throughout the entire film, and never acknowledges her as a woman.  At one point, he aims a gun at her genitals and offers her a “sex change operation.”  Which, is supposed to be comedic.

This isn’t to say that there are no sassy, flirtatious, clothing-obsessed, self-loathing, drug-addicted transgender sex workers, nor is there anything wrong with “stereotypical” trans people.  It isn’t the job of the marginalized to dispel stereotypes.  And if real trans people had created and portrayed Rayon, she could have been a realistic, dynamic, and compelling character.

And I say “created” because Rayon is strictly fictional.  Outside of this film, she didn’t exist.  

���Well, at least they tried to offer representation!”  you protest.  “What else was it supposed to be about?  A straight dude in the AIDS epidemic?”

Well, no.  Though the main character, Ron Woodroof, is presented to us as a violently homophobic, transphobic, womanizing asshole, the real Woodroof was, by all accounts, kind-hearted, open-minded, and bisexual.  

What could have been a powerful story of a queer man defying his diagnosis, living joyfully and meaningfully, and helping to prolong the lives of countless AIDS-sufferers, was instead watered down to a story of a straight, pugnacious asshole and his stereotypical, long-suffering, transgender sidekick who dies to Teach Him Compassion.  

How to avoid her:

Read books by trans people.  Consume media they create or endorse.  

List of youtube channels created by trans people here, and 21 books for trans awareness month here.

Put out a special call for transgender beta readers to point out mistakes, misconceptions, and offer tips on an authentic portrayal.

Garner insight into their perspective and experiences, and give them personalities outside of being trans.  

3.  The Piper Chapman (i.e. the unflavored oatmeal)

GIF source

Who she is:

The “protagonist” of Orange is the New Black, and its least compelling character.  She and Larry are the sort of people who would ask me for a threesome on Tinder.  

Why it sucks:

Piper’s hook is that she’s a privileged, affluent white woman who unjustly finds herself in prison for -- well, for crimes she committed.  But expected to get away with, because, Privilege.

This isn’t to say Piper is boring.  She’s far from likable, but being likable and being boring aren’t the same thing.  In another series, watching a relatively cushioned, naive, bourgeoisie woman string along various significant others, thoughtlessly incite violence, and navigate an unfamiliar prison setting would make for thought-provoking and hilarious satire.  

But when compared to her charismatic supporting cast, with richly developed backstories, motivations, and relationships, she’s painfully bland.  I would much rather watch a series centered around Suzanne, Nikki, Taystee, Poussey, or even Pennsatucky.  They’re just more developed, opulent, enjoyable characters. 

It could be argued that Piper is the viewpoint character, whom the audience is supposed to relate to.  But I can assert that I don’t relate to Piper.  At all.  Her lack of empathy towards others -- such as leaving Alex after the death of her mother, cheating on her fiance, and inadvertently starting a *ahem* white power gang -- alienated me to her.  

Which might not be such a bad thing, but Piper is (supposedly) the protagonist.  We don’t need to like her, but we should probably be able to relate to her.

Or maybe I’m just jealous that hot women aren’t inexplicably fighting over me.

How to avoid her:

Your protagonist doesn’t have to be the most likable character in your story.  They don’t even necessarily have to be the most interesting character in your story.  And certainly not the most morally good, powerful, or knowledgeable.  But the viewpoint character is the character who we spend the most time with, and from whose eyes we perceive the story.  It’s important that we understand and relate to them emotionally.

Look at examples like BoJack Horseman, Holden Caulfield, Tony Soprano, Beatrix from Kill Bill, Mavis from Young Adult, Nadia from Russian Doll.  All are complex characters, with varying degrees of moral ambiguity.  Yet we can empathize with them emotionally and identify with them.  Even if we’ve never been in their situation, we see where they’re coming from.

4.  The Charlie (i.e. the dead lesbian)

Who she is:

One of the few recurring openly queer characters in the incredibly long-running Supernatural.  A lesbian who’s journey was (sort of) brought to an end when she was killed and dumped in a bathtub to incite drama.

Why it sucks:

I love Supernatural  but it can be remarkably tone deaf towards queer people, women, and marginalized groups.  Which, probably merits fixing, considering its following is largely comprised of queer people, women, and marginalized groups.  

I probably shouldn’t have to explain why killing off women and queer people for drama is Bad, but I’ll delve into its history a little:  from what I’ve read, censorship laws of the twentieth century forbade the portrayal of queer people unless they were ultimately killed or “reformed.”  This is why so much LGBTQ+ fiction is essentially gay tragedy porn, and why gays are so frequently buried to aid in the emotional narrative of their straight counterparts.  

That’s not to say queer people can never be killed off.  I might not have an issue with Charlie’s death (especially in a show as violent as Supernatural), if she weren’t the only openly queer character at the time.  

And there’s plenty of room for representation!  If Dean was openly bisexual, if angels were vocally confirmed to be nonbinary, and if there were more recurring, respectfully portrayed female and sapphic characters, Charlie’s death might not feel like such as slap in the face.  But as it is, it feels like a contribution to an ugly pattern.

In fairness, Supernatural has since improved in its portrayal of queer people:  two gay male hunters were introduced and given a happy ending, an alternate universe version of Charlie was introduced to the cast, and God is portrayed as a bisexual man.  

Yes.  All of that happened.  You have to see it to understand.

How to avoid her:

Educate yourself on the history of censorship in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as hate crimes and decreased life expectancy.  Make sure you aren’t contributing to the suffering of queer people.

If you have only one confirmed queer character in the midst of a very large cast, I’m inclined to think you need more.  You could say I’m BI-ased on the matter, though.

Look up “fridging,” and think about how many stories use the death of female characters to incite drama for men.

5.  The Allison (i.e. the reformed feminine)

GIF source

Who she is:

She’s one of the most interesting members of the Breakfast Club, and that’s saying something.  A self-proclaimed compulsive liar who will “do anything sexual” with or without the promise of a million dollars (as well as one of the most quotable characters in the film) she demonstrates the emotional pain and complexity that’s often ignored or shrugged off as teen angst.  

And then she gets a makeover and a hot boyfriend, and suddenly everything’s better.  

Why it sucks:

It would be one thing if Allison’s problem was that she didn’t feel pretty or desirable.  But she never (to my recollection) offers any indication of that, and that’s part of what makes her such a refreshing portrayal of insecurity.  She’s emotionally neglected by her parents, and that is appropriately treated as devastating.  

It’s a complex and beautifully-portrayed problem that deserved far more than such a superficial, slapped-on solution.

Similarly, there’s no reason why Allison is paired up with the jock at the end of the film.  Neither showed any romantic interest in one another until her unnecessary makeover.  

A much better ending to her arc would be her finding acceptance among her newfound friends, and finally garner the recognition and acknowledgement she never got from her parents. 

I was torn between using Allison for this example, or Sandy’s makeover from Grease.  In both, girls are encouraged to alter their appearances to solve plot-related problems.  And both were “fixed” to conform to some standard of femininity or feminine sexuality that they didn’t meet before.

How to avoid her:

If a character feels the need to change their appearance to accommodate others or be respected, that should probably be treated as a negative thing.

Your character’s appearance can be a good tool to represent emotional changes.  If they alter their appearance, there should be a meaningful reason behind it -- outside of fitting into societal norms or garnering the approval of others. 

A girl putting on makeup isn’t a groundbreaking plot point, and girls who don’t perform to standards of femininity aren’t broken or deficient.  They don’t need “correcting.”

[dillydedalus]

january reading

why does january always feel like it’s 3 months long. anyway here’s what i read in january, feat. poison experts with ocd, ants in your brain, old bolsheviks getting purged, and mountweazels. 

city of lies, sam hawke (poison wars #1) this is a perfectly nice fantasy novel about jovan, who serves as essentially a secret guard against poisoning for his city state’s heir and is forced to step up when his uncle (also a secret poison guard) and the ruler are both killed by an unknown poison AND also the city is suddenly under a very creepy siege (are these events related? who knows!) this is all very fine & entertaining & there are some fun ideas, but also... the main character has ocd and SAME HAT SAME HAT. also like the idea of having a very important, secret and potentially fatal job that requires you to painstakingly test everything the ruler/heir is consuming WHILE HAVING OCD is like... such a deliciously sadistic concept. amazing. 3/5

my heart hemmed in, marie ndiaye (translated from french by jordan stump) a strange horror-ish tale in which two married teachers, bastions of upper-middle-class respectability and taste, suddenly find themselves utterly despised by everyone around them, escalating until the husband is seriously injured. through several very unexpected twists, it becomes clear that the couple’s own contempt for anyone not fitting into their world and especially nadia’s hostility and shame about her (implied to be northern african) ancestry is the reason for their pariah status. disturbing, surprising, FUCKED UP IF TRUE (looking back, i no longer really know what i mean by that). 4/5

xenogenesis trilogy (dawn/adulthood rites/imago), octavia e. butler octavia butler is incapable of writing anything uninteresting and while i don’t always completely vibe with her stuff, it’s always fascinating & thought-provoking. this series combines some of her favourite topics (genetic manipulation, alien/human reproduction, what is humanity) into a tale of an alien species, the oankali, saving some human survivors from the apocalypse and beginning a gene-trading project with them, integrating them into their reproductive system and creating mixed/’construct’ generations with traits from both species. and like, to me, this was uncomfortably into the biology = destiny thing & didn’t really question the oankali assertion that humans were genetically doomed to hierarchical behaviour & aggression (& also weirdly straight for a book about an alien species with 3 genders that engages in 5-partner-reproduction with humans), so that angle fell flat for me for the most part, altho i suppose i do agree that embracing change, even change that comes at a cost, is better than clinging to an unsustainable (& potentially destructive) purity. where i think the series is most interesting is in its exploration of consent and in how far consent is possible in extremely one-sided power dynamics (curiously, while the oankali condemn and seem to lack the human drive for hierarchy, they find it very easy to abuse their position of power & violate boundaries & never question the morality of this. in this, the first book, focusing on a human survivor first encountering the oankali and learning of their project, is the most interesting, as lilith as a human most explicitly struggles with her position - would her consent be meaningful? can she even consent when there is a kind of biochemical dependence between humans and their alien mates? the other two books, told from the perspectives of lilith’s constructed/mixed children, continue discussing themes of consent, autonomy and power dynamics, but i found them less interesting the further they moved from human perspectives. on the whole: 2.5/5

love & other thought experiments, sophie ward man, we love a pierre menard reference. anyway. this is a novel in stories, each based (loosely) on a thought experiment, about (loosely) a lesbian couple and their son arthur, illness and grief, parenthood, love, consciousness and perception, alternative universes, and having an ant in your brain. it is thoroughly delightful & clever, but goes for warmth and humanity (or ant-ity) over intellectual games (surprising given that it is all about thought experiments - but while they are a nice structuring device i don’t think they add all that much). i haven’t entirely worked out my feelings about the ending and it’s hard to discuss anyway given the twists and turns this takes, but it's a whole lot of fun. 4/5

a general theory of oblivion, josé eduardo agualusa (tr. from portuguese by daniel hahn) interesting little novel(la) set in angola during and after the struggle for independence, in which a portuguese woman, ludo, with extreme agoraphobia walls herself into her apartment to avoid the violence and chaos (but also just... bc she has agoraphobia) with a involving a bunch of much more active characters and how they are connected to her to various degrees. i didn’t like the sideplot quite as much as ludo’s isolation in her walled-in flat with her dog, catching pigeons on the balcony and writing on the walls. 3/5

cassandra at the wedding, dorothy baker phd student cassandra returns home attend (sabotage) her twin sister judith’s wedding to a young doctor whose name she refuses to remember, believing that her sister secretly wants out. cass is a mess, and as a shift to judith’s perspective reveals, definitely wrong about what judith wants and maybe a little delusional, but also a ridiculously compelling narrator, the brilliant but troubled contrast to judith’s safer conventionality. on the whole, cassandra’s narrative voice is the strongest feature of a book i otherwise found a bit slow & a bit heavy on the quirky family. fav line is when cass, post-character-development, plans to “take a quick look at [her] dumb thesis and see if it might lead to something less smooth and more revolting, or at least satisfying more than the requirements of the University”. 3/5

the office of historical corrections, danielle evans a very solid collection of realist short stories (+ the titular novella), mainly dealing with racism, (black) womanhood, relationships between women, and anticolonial/antiracist historiography. while i thought all the stories were well-done and none stood out as weak or an unnecessary inclusion, there also weren’t any that really stood out to me. 3/5

sonnenfinsternis, arthur koestler (english title: darkness at noon) (audio) you know what’s cool about this book? when i added it to my goodreads tbr in 2012, i would have had to read it in translation as the german original was lost during koestler’s escape from the nazis, but since then, the original has been rediscovered and republished. yet another proof that leaving books on your tbr for ages is a good thing actually. anyway. this is a story about the stalinist purges, told thru old bolshevik rubashov, who, after serving the Party loyally for years & doing his fair share of selling people out for the Party, is arrested for ~oppositional activities. in jail and during his interrogations, rubashov reflects on the course the Party has taken and his own part (and guilt) in that, and the way totalitarianism has eaten up and poisoned even the most commendable ideals the Party once held (and still holds?), the course of history and at what point the end no longer justifies the means. it’s brilliant, rubashov is brilliant and despicable, i’m very happy it was rediscovered. 5/5

heads of the colored people, nafissa thompson-spires another really solid short story collection, also focused on the experiences of black people in america (particularly the black upper-middle class), black womanhood and black relationships, altho with a somewhat more satirical tone than danielle evans’s collection. standouts for me were the story in letters between the mothers of the only black girls at a private school, a story about a family of fruitarians, and a story about a girl who fetishises her disabled boyfriend(s). 3.5/5

pedro páramo, juan rulfo (gernan transl. by dagmar ploetz) mexican classic about a rich and abusive landowner (the titular pedro paramo) and the ghost town he leaves behind - quite literally, as, when his son tries to find his father, the town is full of people, quite ready to talk shit about pedro, but they are all dead. it’s an interesting setting with occasionally vivid writing, but the skips in time and character were kind of confusing and i lost my place a lot. i’d be interested in reading rulfo’s other major work, el llano en llamas. 2.5/5

verse für zeitgenossen, mascha kaléko short collection of the poems kaléko, a jewish german poet, wrote while in exile in the united states in the 30-40s, as well as some poems written after the end of ww2. kaléko’s voice is witty, but at turns also melancholy or satirical. as expected i preferred the pieces that directly addressed the experience of exile (”sozusagen ein mailied” is one of my favourite exillyrik pieces). 3/5

the harpy, megan hunter yeah this was boooooooring. the cover is really cool & the premise sounded intriguing (women gets cheated on, makes deal with husband that she is allowed to hurt him three times in revenge, women is also obsessed with harpies: female revenge & female monsters is my jam) but it’s literally so dull & trying so hard to be deep. 1.5/5

the liar’s dictionary, eley williams this is such a delightful book, from the design (those marbled endpapers? yes) to the preface (all about what a dictionary is/could be), to the chapter headings (A-Z words, mostly relating to lies, dishonesty, etc in some way or another, containing at least one fictitious entry), to the dual plots (intern at new edition of a dictionary in contemporary england checking the incomplete old dictionary for mountweazels vs 1899 london with the guy putting the mountweazels in), to williams’s clear joy about words and playing with them. there were so many lines that made me think about how to translate them, which is always a fun exercise. 3.5/5

catherine the great & the small, olja knežević (tr. from montenegrin by ellen elias-bursać, paula gordon) coming-of-age-ish novel about katarina from montenegro, who grows up in  titograd/podgorica and belgrad in the 70s/80s, eventually moving to london as an adult. to be honest while there are some interesting aspects in how this portrays yugoslavia and conflicts between the different parts of yugoslavia, i mostly found this a pretty sloggy slog of misery without much to emotionally connect to, which is sad bc i was p excited for it :(. 2/5

the decameron project: 29 new stories from the pandemic, anthology a collection of short stories written during covid lockdown (and mostly about covid/lockdown in some way). they got a bunch of cool authors, including margaret atwood, edwidge danticat, rachel kushner ... it’s an interesting project and the stories are mostly pretty good, but there wasn’t one that really stood out to me as amazing. i also kinda wish more of the stories had diverged more from covid/lockdown thematically bc it got a lil repetitive tbh. 2/5

[bigskydreaming]

The Tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason...and Tim...and Damian...and, well, you get it

I maintain that Dick’s history with juvie and the system is actually crucial to understanding his and Jason’s dynamic, not to mention the reasons Bruce took Jason in at all in the first place. 

Its usually described as though Bruce took in all his kids because they reminded him of himself in various ways, but that’s not really true. With Dick, yes, its been clearly canonized this was his motivation. He looked at Dick, who does look a lot like Bruce, especially when they were both younger, and saw a mirror of himself when he was a kid and had just lost his parents. He eventually took Dick in because he wanted to keep Dick from turning out like he had, consumed by his mission, his need to keep bad things from happening to other people, like had happened to him. To make sure Dick had more to his life than just that. He wanted a do-over in a lot of ways. Raising him was a way for Bruce to kinda see how his life would’ve turned out differently, how he would’ve ended up, if he’d taken a different path, if there’d been someone who understood his pain and the intensity of his drive to DO something with all the emotions his parents’ death left him with. 

Yes, of course Bruce had Alfred, but its also been clearly laid out in the comics that Alfred  - for as much as he saw Bruce as a son - just couldn’t relate to him in the same way Bruce could to Dick. He never really understood Bruce’s need to become Batman, he just went with it and supported him anyway, because he’s Alfred and that’s what he does. His kid wants to dress up like a giant bat and go fight crime? Well, okay, lemme get my sewing machine, guess he’s gonna need a costume.

And then with Tim, well, Tim came to Bruce, not the other way around, and they’ve always had an understanding because they come from very similar backgrounds. Same social standing, similar environments....Tim was neglected by his largely absent parents, not actually orphaned (until later), but Bruce definitely saw reminders of his own self-imposed isolation in Tim’s parentally-imposed isolation.  There’s similar links and parallels between Bruce and Damian, Cass and Duke.

Jason was always the outlier.

Bruce never took Jason in because he saw a reminder of himself in Jason, (with the exception of Jason’s anger, which he could relate to on many levels, sure). But Jason’s story really has zero parallels with Bruce. Bruce met him when he was stealing the tires off the Batmobile. Both his parents were still alive, even if they weren’t exactly nurturing influences. He came from a wildly different social background and upbringing, was foul-mouthed, angry, bitter, vindictive, petty. Hell, he didn’t even actually look anything like Bruce, the way we tend to joke about Bruce taking in boys who look just like him. Originally, Jason had red hair. Bruce dyed his hair when he made him Robin. The idea that Bruce took Jason in for the same reason he took in his other kids, because he saw himself reflected in him, saw what he could’ve been if his life had gone a little differently, it just doesn’t work. On any level. There’s no scenario in which Bruce ever could have lived any version of Jason’s life. No scenario in which Jason was only a few degrees removed from Bruce’s own personal experiences.

No, Bruce took Jason in for one reason and one reason only - because he looked at him and saw Dick Grayson. He saw the boy Dick Grayson could have grown up to become if Bruce hadn’t taken him in, if Dick had been left to rot in juvie or elsewhere in Gotham’s corrupt system. If Dick had fallen through the cracks without anyone to catch him, the way Jason clearly had.

Forgetting where Dick came from, ignoring his original backstory, completely obliterates Bruce’s entire motivation for adopting Jason. And it completely erases Bruce’s real role in the trainwreck that became his relationship with both Jason and with Dick, not to mention the original relationship between Jason and Dick.

Because Bruce fucked up, big time, when he took Jason in. Oh, not that he shouldn’t have done it, but in the WHY he did it, and the fact that he never really acknowledged this and nobody ever really called him out for it. With Dick, Bruce was trying to give him a better life. Even if he fumbled and went about it the wrong way, his motivations were still pretty pure. Bruce was aware enough on some level of his own flaws, his own deep-seated dissatisfaction with his own life, to genuinely want to steer someone he saw himself in from going down the same road, making the same mistakes. A huge number of Bruce and Dick’s early conflicts were essentially Bruce frustrated that he didn’t know how to get Dick to stop making the same mistakes Bruce himself regretted making. Not getting that it still had to be up to Dick whether or not he did, that the choices ultimately had to be his. 

But with Jason....Bruce’s motivations were not so selfless, and they were not nearly as self-aware. Bruce took Jason in pretty much in the immediate aftermath of his biggest fight with Dick ever, when he fired Dick as Robin and basically kicked him out...entirely out of an emotionally stunted sense of self-preservation. The idea of Dick being hurt, of losing him if he died, it terrified Bruce so completely that he pushed him away, as though if he lost him on HIS terms, deliberately, that would somehow be better, it’d hurt less. Except it didn’t. He regretted it immediately, but he didn’t know how to fix it without owning that he’d fucked up, without explaining to Dick WHY he’d done what he did, allowing himself to be vulnerable and admitting just how terrified he was of losing him....and Bruce just was not capable of that at the time (as if he is now, even).

And so then he’s out fighting crime one night and returns to the Batmobile, to find some scrawny little kid stealing the tires off it. A kid who wasn’t remotely apologetic, who was defiant, and ballsy, and not about to be intimidated by even the goddamn Batman, who swung his tire iron at this giant dude in a Bat costume, spitting and kicking and screaming as if he had the slightest chance of winning. It didn’t matter to him that he didn’t, couldn’t, Jason Todd was going down swinging. And in that moment, you can not tell me that its himself Bruce Wayne saw. That he looked at Jason and saw any version of himself or the kid he once was or even one he could have ended up as.

Nope, he saw Dick Grayson, the tiny little acrobat who’d guilt tripped him, HIM, into letting him dress up in bright yellow and green and run across rooftops taking on bad guys twice his size, villains he shouldn’t have had a prayer of defeating but did anyway, because he just refused to accept an alternative as reality. He saw the kid a young, angry Dick Grayson could’ve grown up to be if he’d been left in juvie, if he’d never had anyone else take him in and show him the kindness he thought he’d never see again after his parents died. He saw the Dick Grayson who’d been originally consumed not with Bruce’s desire to pursue justice, but with a desire to pursue REVENGE. I know everyone tends to view it as the other way around, but that doesn’t actually check out. Even in the backstories where Bruce finds the actual killer who murdered his parents, Joe Chill, Bruce’s own views on killing restrict him from every taking revenge rather than just making sure he goes to prison. 

Not so, with Dick. Another element of Dick’s original backstory that everybody largely glosses over, even if they do technically keep it in mind - Dick Grayson wasn’t born this pure, virtuous, glowing saint that so many fans and other characters make him out to be. The exact specifics vary in the different versions of his backstory reboots have resulted in, but in the vast majority of them, this is a kid who ran away and ruthlessly hunted down his parents’ murderer, Tony Zucco, and who usually had every intention of killing him if Bruce hadn’t stopped him. Dick was old enough to know right from wrong, murder is bad, blah blah....he just didn’t care. And Bruce didn’t stop him by making some compelling argument or showing him the error of his ways, he didn’t tell him anything Dick didn’t already know. Essentially, what all those various takes on the Zucco plot boil down to is Dick only really refrained from trying to kill Zucco, settling for bringing him in, because Bruce wanted him to. Because Bruce was the first and only person to show Dick any kindness since his parents died, and THAT is what Dick clung to, that was what he didn’t want to lose. 

(A little off topic, but additionally I’ve always maintained that Dick doesn’t have this obsessive anti-killing stance that most people make him out to, being even more rigid in it than Bruce. This is the guy who has an extremely complex relationship with Deathstroke, who’s mentored Ravager, who is the closest sibling relationship Damian has, not to mention his relationships with Huntress, Midnighter, Tiger, etc - all people who have killed many, many times, and often without remorse. Yes, Dick broke down after his role in Blockbuster’s death, and he had a panic attack immediately after killing the Joker, before Bruce resuscitated him - but if you ask me, this isn’t because his personal morality doesn’t make allowances for killing, its because deep down he’s still insecure about his place in Bruce’s life, and that HIM killing someone, specifically, could cost him his father’s affections. Which is a TOTALLY different thing from being too good or pure to kill, which is how he’s often painted as by writers and in fandom).

Anyway. Point being, the surly, defensive kid Jason Todd was when Bruce met him was absolutely someone Dick Grayson, orphaned circus kid remanded to juvie and likely to have fallen through the cracks and ended up on his own if Bruce hadn’t intervened, could have ended up as. And so while Bruce had looked at Dick that first night at the circus and seen the potential for a do-over for himself, the road not taken, with this cemented on the night he steered Dick away from killing Zucco and instead prioritizing (Bruce’s personal view of) justice.....Bruce looked at Jason that night in Crime Alley and saw the potential for a do-over for his relationship with Dick, with the son he’d driven away, possibly for good.

And herein lies the fuck-up. Because while I do believe Bruce eventually grew to see Jason as his own person and love him on his own merits, for himself, and not just as Dick 2.0, he took too long getting there, and hurt both Dick and Jason way too much along the way. All because he’s too much of a control freak to just accept that it was these tendencies that’d driven Dick away, that HE was the problem. Yeah, Dick contributed, sure, but Dick was the child. Bruce was the parent. It was always his responsibility to suck it up, swallow his pride, and be the one to reach out and repair the damage he’d caused by pushing Dick away. But because Bruce has so much trouble admitting where he’s done harm, he couldn’t do that. He’s this weird dichotomy of self-aware and willfully blind. He has no problem seeing his flaws when they exist in a vacuum. When they’re ones nobody’s getting actively getting hurt by in the moment. But because so much of his personality is centered around his all-consuming desire to protect his loved ones, keep them safe at all costs, ensure that he doesn’t lose them the way he lost his parents.....over and over and over again in the comics, he proves incapable of recognizing when that very same desire is the thing that’s actually harming them. He took in half a dozen kids who all shared a need to fly, to spread their wings, and time and time again kept falling in the same trap of trying to clip those same wings because he was equally terrified of them falling.

But because Bruce was so willfully blind to his own role in hurting his son, couldn’t reconcile his desperate desire to keep Dick safe with the realization that he was the one doing Dick the most harm.....he HAD to convince himself that Dick was the problem. That if he, Bruce, had made mistakes, that they were mistakes that he’d done along the way, places he’d gone wrong in raising Dick, resulting in Dick growing up to be this person Bruce could no longer relate to, no longer see himself in, that he couldn’t be a father to. And so, with Jason, he saw a chance to do it all over again, and do it right this time. Fix the mistakes he’d made the first time around, be a better father, make sure Jason didn’t grow up to be the man Dick had grown up to be, the way he’d once set out to make sure Dick didn’t grow up to be the man Bruce had become.

And so he created this trap that Jason and Dick had no chance to avoid falling into. There was no way around it. Because unintentionally or not, he’d pitted his two sons, two brothers, against each other before they ever even had a chance to meet. He’d made it a competition that both were doomed to be stuck in even as neither could EVER hope to actually win. Dick was screwed because he could never hope to beat the kid that Bruce had essentially replaced him with, not when Bruce had only done that because due to his own fuck-ups, Bruce had decided Dick needed replacing, because their relationship was beyond repair. And Jason could never hope to beat the kid that Bruce had taken him in to replace, because he was from the get-go pitted against Bruce’s IDEALIZED image of his first Robin and son, the person he WANTED Dick to be, and who didn’t actually exist outside of Bruce’s refusal to admit his own fault in his fractured relationship with Dick.

The very things he did that were GOOD for Jason, healthy, helpful, empowering....at the same time, HURT Dick. He adopted as his official son and heir within months of meeting him, even though he didn’t end up adopting Dick, his son of over ten years by that point, until years after Jason died, long after Dick was already a grown adult. And this was a good thing for Jason, at first. Bruce DID love Jason, had already by this point started seeing all the ways Jason was his own person, not a second Dick Grayson, and being officially adopted gave Jason a sense of security and certainty in his place there that he desperately needed. Problem is, Bruce only adopted Jason so quickly and easily because he recognized that this was a mistake he’d made the first time, with Dick. That it’d been a mistake putting off adopting Dick, that he’d always backed out of showing Dick the adoption papers he’d had drawn up for YEARS by that point. All because Bruce was afraid of rejection, that if he tried to insist too hard on being Dick’s father, tried to actually draw comparisons between himself and Dick’s first father, the idolized John Grayson, he’d come up short and get an answer he was afraid to hear. It was easier with Jason, since Jason had never had a good relationship with his own biological father and had zero problem rating Bruce the clear winner in any competition between them.

But of course this hurt Dick at the same time it helped Jason, because he HAD always wanted Bruce to officially adopt him, and it was his own insecurities that kept him from broaching the subject and asking why he hadn’t. The very fact that Bruce knew to do this with Jason, that it’d been a mistake not to push it with Dick, was because on some level, Bruce did know that Dick wanted this, needed this even, and that his own fears of rejection were baseless paranoia.....there’s no way to avoid this compounding his issues with Dick, because it meant that on some level, Bruce had once again denied Dick something he desperately needed and craved from him. A clear indication of their relationship, where Dick stood with Bruce, how Bruce viewed him. Ironically, at the very same time this proved that Bruce’s fear of Dick rejecting him were baseless, it proved that Dick’s insecurities WEREN’T baseless, because his place in Bruce’s eyes WASN’T entirely secure. He COULD be replaced.

And there’s the irony of Jason’s nickname for Tim. “The Replacement.” Only it was never actually ironic, so much as it was insightful. Born of Jason’s own insecurities. Because long before Tim came along, in the original family drama that was Bruce and Dick and Jason.....JASON was the original replacement, and they all knew it, only Bruce refused to admit it. Kept trying to act like it was all in Dick and Jason’s heads, even while every choice he made with the two of them just hammered in the reality that it WASN’T. Neither of them was stupid. They were the original sons of the world’s greatest detective. Trained to be observant and insightful. To read between the lines. They knew damn well that everything Bruce did with Jason was only because Bruce had decided (at the time) that his relationship with Dick was beyond repair. Unsalvageable. He’d essentially given up on Dick as a son, written off any possibility of having the father-son relationship he’d always secretly wanted to have with Dick, all because he refused to admit he was the one standing in the way of that and refusing to accept the man Dick had grown up to be, differences of opinion and all....and so had started over with Jason. 

And Dick saw exactly what Bruce was doing, cuz Bruce isn’t exactly subtle when it comes to his personal relationships and his emotional issues. So it pinged every single insecurity Dick had ever had, and HARD. And once Jason saw Bruce and Dick interacting and heard the nature of their arguments, he saw exactly what Bruce was doing, and began second-guessing every good thing about his and Bruce’s relationship, wondering (with validity) how much of it had happened while Bruce was wishing it’d happened with Dick. Which of course pinged every single insecurity Jason had ever had, and HARD. 

So from the moment Dick and Jason met, with a few rare exceptions where they were able to see past the Bruce-sized elephant in the room and view and interact with each other on their own merits, as their own persons, and just be BROTHERS, rather than dysfunctional sons of the world’s most repressed dad....Bruce and Dick and Jason were all locked in this never-ending cycle of Hurt, Rinse and Repeat.

Bruce adopts Jason. Jason is glad. Dick gets mad. Jason realizes why Dick is mad, and now Jason is mad.

Bruce makes Jason his new Robin. Jason is glad. Dick gets mad, because Robin was his mom’s personal nickname for him and not remotely something Bruce was ever the right person to give away. To make Jason his new sidekick, sure. But not with that name, the name Dick chose to honor his relationship with his mother. Jason realizes why Dick is mad, and now Jason is mad.

Bruce is happy when Jason calls him Dad and encourages it. Jason is glad. Dick gets mad, because Dick never felt encouraged or safe in calling Bruce Dad, even when he wanted to, because Bruce never encouraged it or even hinted it was what he wanted because Bruce was insecure and afraid Dick just didn’t view him that way and would never want to call him that. Jason realizes why Dick is mad, and now Jason is mad.

Over and over and over, every single damn thing Bruce did just compounded the harm he caused both his sons in doing it. All because he refused to just admit what he really wanted all along, and actually WORK at making a reality - to be a father to both Dick and Jason, and have both of them view him as such.

And that’s the tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason. They all wanted THE EXACT SAME THING ALL ALONG. But only Bruce could make it happen. No matter how much Dick and Jason wanted it, no matter how they raged at each other and blamed each other for not having it, Bruce was always the only one who could actually make them the family they all wanted to be. Because he was the parent. He was their dad.

And if you want your kids to accept you and call you and love you as their dad, you gotta do the goddamn job. Instead of calling do-over every time you fuck it up.

So of course Jason felt threatened by Tim when he came back, and of course he resented Tim, and called Tim “the Replacement.” Even though Bruce hadn’t actually sought Tim out as a replacement for Jason, there was no way for Jason to know that and no reason for him to believe it when told it....because Bruce had done this all before. With him! Every time Jason lashed out at Tim with that name, it was his own insecurities talking, his conviction that he’d been relegated to the same backburner he’d once seen Bruce shove Dick to, that he’d once insecurely expressed smugness about, when he could point to Bruce’s open affections as proof he was loved, but now knew exactly how it felt. But it wasn’t like Jason could take comfort in the fact that Dick was now welcomed back in the manor, that he was at Bruce’s side again. Because Bruce STILL had never acknowledged where he’d fucked up. In the wake of Jason’s death, Bruce and Dick eventually repaired their relationship....but only because DICK did the work. Was the one to reach out and make it happen, with Bruce so grief-stricken over the loss of Jason he didn’t have the obstinacy to KEEP pushing his remaining son away when he came bearing an olive branch.

But even with that, Dick and Jason at least were still painfully aware that should never have been Dick’s job to do that. To step up, be the bigger man, the more mature adult, even though he was the child in that relationship. Dick did so because it wasn’t worth it to him to insist on being in the right, even though he was. He eventually decided he’d rather have Bruce in his life on Bruce’s terms than not at all. But it was never his responsibility to do that, and that means Jason was never in the wrong to refuse to do that. To make it easier for Bruce, and coddle his own father when every child of Bruce Wayne’s has just as much trauma as he ever did, and he has no excuse for not doing the goddamn work of pulling his head out of his ass and giving his children what they need from him. Some actual honest, sincere, and UNSHAKABLE certainty that no matter what, he is their father and always will be.

And without that, the cycle was always doomed to repeat itself. First with Jason and Tim...because Tim might not actually have been a replacement for Jason in Bruce’s eyes, the way he’d unintentionally ended up making Jason a replacement for Dick. But without Bruce ever actually owning up to the mistakes he’d made with his two eldest, there was no way to address the fact that Jason’s insecurities here were NOT baseless, that he had actual reason to worry that this is exactly what had happened. There was precedent.

And then it happened again. Because by the time Damian came into their lives, Tim - who also is not an idiot, and easily the most detective-like of Bruce’s first four sons - had been firmly entrenched in the family drama for some time. The Tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason had for a few years now been the Tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason and Tim. He, like Jason before him, had had a front row seat to Bruce’s obstinate refusal to admit his role at the center of this tragedy, and so clearly could see Bruce’s patterns and how his selective doling out of favoritism went hand in hand with who Bruce currently viewed as beyond repair, in terms of father-son dynamic at least.  

So just like both his older brothers before him, Tim viewed the newest Wayne son as a threat, and a replacement. And just like both Dick and Jason, he wasn’t wrong to do so. He wasn’t RIGHT, either, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong. That his fears were baseless. And so this time, just like when Tim had been the newcomer, circumstances were different, but the end result was the same. Bruce hadn’t sought Damian out, and Damian hadn’t come to him in the same sense Tim had. But once there, Damian received the lion’s share of Bruce’s attention as Bruce attempted to forge a bond with him, and so this time, it was the transitive property in reverse. Tim saw Bruce behaving in the way Bruce always did when a new son came into his life and occupied his focus, with tunnel vision - because Bruce always defaults to tunnel vision when committing himself to a new endeavor - and Tim reverse-engineered from there the belief that he’d been replaced and thus must have done something wrong, had somehow been lacking. Because that’s the pattern in their family. Without exception. 

(Among the boys at least, Cass always having been exempt from this fucked up little family tradition due to being the sole girl and never a Robin, thus occupying her own little niche that had no direct competition, unlike the boys who always ended up locked in that same competition Bruce had initiated with Dick and Jason so long ago.)

And thus it became the Tragedy of Bruce and Dick and Jason and Tim and Damian. With again, always, the painful irony being every single damn member of this family wants nothing more than the exact same thing - to be a family, and equally secure in that knowledge.

I honestly don’t know how much this pattern has repeated with Duke, as due to not reading DC much since even before the nu52 for the sake of my blood pressure, all of my knowledge of Duke comes from fandom and fanfic. Which is more than enough to make me love him, but means I don’t feel comfortable including him in meta currently, because I don’t actually trust fanfics and issues synopses to have the same interpretation of the characters and dynamics that I’d have if I read them myself. (Seriously, I’m a little ticked off at how it took me like three years to learn that Duke’s a meta, even, which is extremely interesting information and something I was very interested in knowing, and am side-eyeing the hell out of a lot of fandom for how long this bit of NON TRIVIA took to show up on my radar. Like, its not exactly a small detail, if so many ppl leave that out like what the hell else is getting left out of fandom takes on Duke and his character and story? Ugh, I can’t believe I gotta start reading DC again, u guys let me down, why would u do this to me, ur the worst).

Anyway. Thought this was gonna be a little bitty post about how much Dick and Jason actually have in common and it ended up a Bruce Why Are You Like This essay. That actually sounds about right though.

The end! 

(For now.....)   

[amandajoyce118]

2020 In Review

I used to end the year with blog posts highlighting 100 things, or 50 things if I wasn’t that ambitious, that I loved about the year. Usually, those things were pop culture things. 2020, however, is a special year, no? I mean, a pandemic, quarantines, political unrest, massive bread lines, natural disasters, refugees seeking better lives, stressful elections, etc. For most people, to make a blanket statement, this year sucked.

Most of the people following me know that I’m a freelance writer, but I have a full time day job as a fresh merchandiser for a food service distributor. That means I never “shut down” or worked from home or any of the other things people have been forced to do. I work a full day pretty much every day with customers who don’t understand why distribution has slowed, why I have “long term outs” of items like cases of hard boiled eggs or fresh ginger, why there are certain days of the week when they just can’t get chicken wings. I have people who refuse to wear masks, employees who forget to disinfect work stations, and a questionnaire I have to fill out before every shift as to whether or not I think I’ve been exposed to covid. And when I’m done there, I escape by writing.

As a result, I haven’t been doing much for fun. Outside of my day job, the media I consume is generally for freelance work, which has made this year really exhausting, no matter how much writing/stories is an escape for me. That’s why, instead of just things I loved this year, I’m going to give you a list of 10 pieces of media I’ve consumed - over and over and over again - that I’ve somehow not gotten sick of when writing listicles about the subjects. I feel like we all need to feel like we’re getting lost in a good story, or with characters we genuinely enjoy, even if, like me, we’re getting lost in those worlds with those characters to be able to write about them.

The Baby-Sitters Club

I was obsessed with the books, the ‘90s show, and the eventual movie as a kid, so it’s no surprise that I was counting down the days until the Netflix adaptation premiered - and I loved it. I’m not going to lie, I’ve watched this show from beginning to end four times this year. It’s such a quick watch and there’s something really great about watching these girls grow up.

Nancy Drew

Again, obsessed with Nancy Drew as a kid. More specifically, obsessed with the ‘80s case files as a kid. I read all of them I could get my hands on. The new television show is a little more Riverdale than the novels are, but it’s an interesting spin on the characters and stories we already know - and the representation of a diverse community on the show is fantastic.

Anne With An E

I’m still holding out hope for a movie to close out this show since there are something like seven books in the original series and the show basically only covered the first one? Where is the justice? But, this is another show I think I’ve watched three times from beginning to end because Anne Shirley Cuthbert is someone you want to be friends with, no matter how old you are. You also want her to come to her senses within about 30 seconds of being introduced to Gilbert Blythe, so you know, it’s a fun and angsty time.

Agents Of SHIELD

One of my favorite Marvel properties ended this year, and… I should probably be more sad about it? Like, I absolutely would have watched more episodes of this show if it had kept going, but I’m also incredibly satisfied with how the show concluded this year, which is rare for me. I’ve gone back and rewatched a handful of episodes for articles, and Agents Of SHIELD feels like a show that I’ll end up rewatching yearly because it’s one of the few shows where I’ve actively engaged in fandom for years and still genuinely love.

Timeless

Yes, I rewatched this gem this year while writing a handful of listicles, and I’m bitter that this didn’t get more seasons. The cast chemistry, the stories of those often overlooked by history, and the twist of a shady organization being closer than you think? It’s pretty perfect. I miss it. It’s a yearly rewatch already.

Pitch Perfect Trilogy

Every so often, I find myself in the mood to hear Anna Kendrick belt out a few songs. Pitch Perfect tends to win out over Into The Woods, and I can’t ever seem to stop at just the first movie. Pitch Perfect is cheesy and not as perfect as its title implies, but it always puts me in a good mood. I want more comedies about a capella groups, please.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

If I had to say where my love of serial storytelling, or my ability to engage in fandom, started, it was with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I had friends who would create their own team of Rangers when I was little, and we’d trade kicks on the playground (which got us in trouble), and yeah, as an adult watching a show made in 1993, this show is ridiculous. Full stop. But it’s also the kind of show that makes you remember that a whole generation was raised on the idea that even if the good guys don’t always win, they keep trying. They never give up. And that’s just as important today as it was then.

Teen Wolf

I recognize that this show is sometimes a mess and that continuity is not always its strong suit. Does that mean I love it any less? Nope. And neither does the rest of the internet since some of my articles still get heavy rotation even though the show has been off the air for years. It’s the kind of show that pulls me in, even when I already know what’s about to happen.

Leverage

Oh, Leverage. How do I possibly explain how excited I am that you’re getting a revival? I don’t think I can. Also, I don’t know why I’m talking to Leverage directly when I haven’t to anything else on this list. Leverage is about a group of criminals who steal from the corrupt to give back to their victims. I mean. It’s Robin Hood for the modern age. It’s a found family. There are love stories. There are redemption arcs. It’s just chock full of greatness. And Aldis Hodge as Alec Hardison.

RWBY

I only really got into RWBY last year, and it’s fast becoming one of my favorite anime, though admittedly, I don’t watch a ton of anime. I love the references to fairy tales, mythology, and history mixed into this crazy fantasy world. I love that the villains are as compelling as the heroes. I love that in such a large cast of characters, I want to know more about everyone. It’s a fascinating show and some of the episodes are only five minutes long. 

Sailor Moon

I grew up in the ‘90s era of television, so, of course, I watched Sailor Moon after school. The English dubs because I’m a heathen, what do you want from me? I’ve really enjoyed revisiting the ‘90s series after watching Sailor Moon Crystal because, obviously, the ‘90s anime is not exactly the story that was told in the manga. It has such a rich mythology and fascinating characters not to mention beautiful designs.

Naruto

I’m going to be honest, you guys. I never thought I would be into Naruto. But something about it just hooks you. I got into it because there were always listicle topics that editors created for the show on the sites I write for, and I was curious. Unlike manga purists, I actually really like the filler episodes. I think they add a lot to understanding the characters. Also, there is no anime character I love more than Shikamaru in Naruto Shippuden.

New Girl

Okay. New Girl has really been the saving grace of 2020. I know this show ended a few years ago. I know that people should be ready for other things. But here’s the truth: I’m not really a sitcom person. I was as a teenager, but as an adult, I like my serial storytelling to be completely unrealistic and dramatic, usually. But 2020 has been so heavy that I needed the lightness New Girl provides. 

And I love each and every resident of the loft - even the ones I would never be able to stand hanging out with in real life. I love how much they all grow up over the course of the show. I love the one-liners. I love the running jokes. I love the musical numbers. I love the Nick and Jess of it all. In 2020 alone I have watched the first five episodes of this show about ten times. I’ve watched the show from beginning to end twice in just the last three months of the year. I love it so much I’ve even considered writing fanfiction for it (though I really don’t have the time and haven’t even finished old works over the last year). When this pandemic is behind us all, I’d actually consider playing the (arguably dangerous and would likely give everyone alcohol poisoning) game of True American just to see if my friends and I could get through it. 2020 has been rough, but at least New Girl is still on Netflix.

There you have it, a baker’s dozen of the things that got me through this year - mostly in television format. There’s something I just love about serial storytelling, and when it looks like the world is falling apart, it’s nice to have the comfort of happy endings and stories you can plot out yourself. Here’s hoping 2021 is kinder to all of us, and has plenty more stories for us to get lost in.

[vervevibesvino]

Vibes + Vino: 4 Producers, 4 Regions

The record producer: The experience architect, the idea-lobbyist, the ditty boss.

J Dilla - The Sherry Triangle I don’t know what my life was before J Dilla. I don’t know what my life was before Sherry. My first wine mentor was obsessed with Sherry and, in my naive adolescence, I followed like a Hypebeast lemming with no initial context, because who was I to voice a real opinion when my understanding of wine comprised of not knowing Malbec’s origins were in France and pronouncing Xinomavro wrong. (Plus, Sherry was having its boom with hipsters at the time so I was inundated with questions at least 3x daily.)

In retrospect, this no-quantifiable-preconception crash course to Sherry was the best way for me to fall in love with it. It’s essentially a scrappy, off-beat drink if you think about it, and transparent in showcasing distinct soil characteristics, especially by the Albariza soil. #JDillaIsBae because of the same scrappy, off-beat production. Even in the very beginnings as Jay Dee evolved into being a full-time producer, he reminds me of the transparent, against-the-grain nature of the sax & percussion somersaults of 1940s bebop. He constantly built upon his blended style and didn’t overhaul it for anything or anyone. Kind of like the blended nature of Sherry itself, and how new oak isn’t really a solera thing when it comes to Sherry because the tannins would impede the development of flor. Or, even the fact that barrels are preferably fixed instead of replaced/discarded. After J Dilla, everything I thought I knew about hip-hop changed. After Sherry, I opened a new door to beverage geeking. Both run-ins are IRL examples of the often imitated, never duplicated two.

No I.D. - Burgundy My love affair with No I.D. is severely skewed being from Chicago and by my love affair with No I.D.-touched Common albums, specifically 1997’s One Day It'll All Make Sense—which is yours truly’s personal Holy Grail reach for soul searching, psyche demon slaying, and figuring-life-out moments. In the world of hip-hop production as a whole, on the surface it may not seem like No I.D.’s kudos is even comparable to James Yancey levels, but beneath it all it is… and then some. It's real easy to seperate the diehards, casual fans, and curious listeners of No I.D. when the masses only attribute his success to being a master sampler. (Not to discredit the latter by any means, because his artistry of the sample is his muscle—often euphonically ambitious yet golden.)

No I.D.’s music touch is practically sacred. Hell, he’s like the trillion dollar CPG industry in producer form—reputation in a broad space and honing his craft to flow with and stay relevant in current and future markets. He’s what Burgundy is to the wine world, and Burgundy’s domination comes in its own variant of CPG: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Gamay. Yet outsider looking in, a snapshot of Burgundy in population and size might provoke assumptions that the region’s reach would barely make a dent in the world of wine. However, its influence has proven otherwise—and it’s a hell of a lot to examine. It’s to a point where I have to stop myself from feeling defeated when sinking into any Burgundy topic because I constantly feel a million steps behind in the the elaborate, convoluted technicalities. Much like how some winemakers have set Burgundies as a benchmark for influencing their own style of wines, No I.D.'s production style has taken other production artists to new heights. He’s a Veteran for a reason, infiltrating nearly three decades of music.

One No I.D. standout for me in the last five years would have to be "Higher" on Rihanna's ANTI - and it's barely 2 minutes long. In its slurred, vampy nature, it is profoundly focused. That's kind of how he bulldozed even through this next gen of artists - not taking the big shots right away, making punches where it mattered, and leveling up himself. He took time off, got inspired. Even simply relating back to Rihanna as a brand powerhouse, if you think about how influential the Fenty brand has combated the CPG sector of cosmetics when people felt the market was already saturated by celebrity releases, that's No I.D. as a producer. Preeminently, he’s been in the thicks of it, the cornerstone of it, molding a stockpile of careers.

Babyface - Willamette Valley These two scream the clashing dichotomies of the Old School and New School. On one side we have a marveled producer, the master of the dramatic R&B hook and sometimes dubbed the Quincy of my generation (although no one will ever be Quincy). On the flip side we have a region just as dramatic in its moist climate and consuming diurnal shifts, yet it's also a region compared to the likes of Burgundy probably more often than social media sees a contouring vid posted by a Kardashian (although Willamette will never be Burgundy).

Willamette Valley not only is an significant player in Oregon, but the Pacific Northwest as a whole. It's one of the larger American Viticultural Areas and as a New World region, it may not get enough of its due credit when the comparatives are hypersensitive to Old World traditions and fixated on what Willamette Valley is not in comparison to those Old World counterparts. But to me, Willamette is a mélange of the most intriguing characteristics of both Old World and New World wines. Minerality, mutually rustic and earthy - all with a nominal but distinctive fruit personality that is essentially the anti-Burgundy. Babyface initially was met with similar caution in the beginning of his production career - meeting a new generation of R&B listeners while the genre's core at the time could, in essence, be a genre quarterbacked by nobody other than Quincy Jones. Alongside L.A. Reid, he became the bridge to the New School from the Old School in the age of 90's R&B.

Bob Thiele - Tuscany Can you even put your finger on how many times a jazz recording has been sampled? Even if you drilled down to just one work, the gold standard of A Love Supreme, you'd be met with a hefty list. That influence is just one piece of the pie, and only takes sampling use and one album into account. But Bob Thiele's reach stretches much further - Thiele is one of the great names of jazz. His technical proficiency was ahead of his time, and the influence of his work has criss-crossed across generations of listeners and genres.

This kind of intertwining evolution makes me think of the Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc lovechild: Cabernet Sauvignon. As widely acknowledged as Bob Thiele is in jazz, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are the most planted wine grape worldwide. It’s French in origin, but Italy and its history with the grape is very Bob Thiele - eqsue compelling, in particular. The initial rise of what is now the "Super Tuscan" was met with much controversy as wine laws pre-1980s did not accommodate the foreign grapes then. Eventually grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon would round out the red blend in following years -- winemakers saw it as a way to improve wine quality -- but if emjois existed during the time, any befuzzled/sneering look emjoi would’ve fit right into the reception of the Super Tuscan prior to actually coining the term "Super Tuscan".

In a world of countless Bob Thiele chartmakers, the "What A Wonderful World" project with George David Weiss and Louis Armstrong was not as honored upon release, and was received in similar fashion to how a Super Tuscan was viewed in Italy in the 1980s. Just like how the intention of adding foreign grapes to indigenous Italian varieties was to improve wine quality, "What A Wonderful World" was a tune set out to bridge gaps in race and culture at a time when race relations were beyond heated. Instead, the song faced criticism for simplistic lyrics and for an ignorance toward the world's state at the time. It would take years before the song was even seen as a standard.

[jonchampion95]

Different Times

After that date they had, things went quiet. Lucy had just taken a job with a digital marketing company and Chris was working as an administrator at one of the companies on his estate. Time passed, as did interactions via text. However, there was a sadness underlying this decrease in passion.

They eventually arranged to meet and sat in a cosy coffee bar that had ample heating. There was an obvious lack of excitement and an ambiguous reason as to why. They addressed the feeling over their drinks; Lucy explained that her work has been time consuming and she had been having difficulties at home. Chris probed, asking what the problem was despite knowing her reluctance on the topic. She explained that her elder brother had moved away under bad circumstances and since then, had not been in contact with her or her mother. While this did seem to be the cause of some of her reserved behaviour, Chris could see something bigger lurking beneath her once deep eyes.

‘There’s more, I can tell.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What aren’t you telling me?’

‘What makes you think I’m not telling you anything?’

‘You’re different, something’s different.’

‘Stop interrogating me. I just told you some heavy stuff.’ She folded her arms as if she was defending her heart.

‘How are you feeling about everything?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll get through it. I always do.’

‘What if you didn’t always have to get through things?’

She didn’t answer. She sipped the last of her coffee and suggested they go elsewhere.

They were on the high street of St Albans, the distance between them masquerading as a necessity to avoid people walking the other way.

‘Where do you want to go?’ Chris asked.

‘I don’t know. You choose.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t mind.’

‘That’s really unhelpful.’

He was starting to really annoy her. What was wrong with her leaving it for him to decide?

‘I honestly don’t mind Chris.’

Silence invaded them as they walked. After enough time for the two of them to soak in the disappointment of this afternoon, Chris spoke once more.

‘I’ll drop you home.’

In Chris’ car, the music that had scored their happy journey to the high street was nowhere to be heard. All that accompanied their ride was the pounding of rain on the windscreen and the occasional whisper of a car travelling in the opposite direction. Then Chris burst into life.

‘What’s “I don’t mind”?’

‘What?’

‘That doesn’t add value to the interaction. It isn’t helpful.’

‘Why are you obsessed with this? I’m saying that no matter what we do or where we go, I’ll be happy with the outcome. How is that unhelpful?!’

‘Because then I’m making all the decisions. What we do next is the most relevant and real moment we’re about to have - how could you have no say in what happens in that moment?’ His tone was steadily rising. It had a slight harshness in its clarity.

‘This is such a stupid conversation. You’re being ridiculous.’

‘We’re having the conversation because you didn’t make a decision. I might as well be alone.’

That sentence struck her chest with such venom, she was paralysed by the notion.

‘Stop the car.’ She muttered

‘What?’

She opened the door while the car was still accelerating forward. Chris reacted fast and veered into a lay-by, provoking an ensemble of beeps from the cars behind. As soon as the car stopped, she got out and shut the door, walking away in the heavy rain.

‘Lucy!’

She walked towards a field that she would be able to cut across to get to her house. Chris hopped out and chased after her, gracefully jumping over a barrier, leaving his car behind.

‘Lucy, come on.’

‘Please leave me alone.’ She uttered the words as she continued walking away. He eventually caught up to her. The rhythmic thuds of his boots hitting the grass brought her back to the memory of their first date outside of Bloom. It hit her with the same ferociousness a memory hits you with when you smell something familiar for the first time in a while.

‘Can’t we just talk openly about this?’

‘You said it yourself, you’d rather be alone.’

‘I said I might as well be.’

‘Much better.’

He made one last effort to keep her there, placing his hand on her shoulder. She turned aggressively and forced his hand away.

‘Don’t. Leave me alone.’ She walked on, disappearing into the melancholy shelter of a rain-drenched woodland. Chris stood alone in the field, soaked to the skin.

Months passed. Soon after their ordeal, Chris sent a long email to Emily. There was no apology in the letter, just an expression of something that he wished he had realised in the moment she walked into those trees.

Lucy sunk into the depths of her broken mind. She questioned everything. She felt worthless. She wondered what the point had been of getting so invested in Chris, or what it meant to be invested in anyone for that matter. They did not speak after Chris’ email. He often wondered what her response to it would be and the uncertainty carried a feeling of heaviness in his heart. With time, their lives continued - Chris’ burdened with uncertainty, Lucy’s drowned in a feeling of meaninglessness.

When Bloom approached again, the two of them pondered the last year of their respective lives. Nothing had progressed for either of them. Revisiting Bloom would either be an admittance of stasis, or the first step forward either of them had taken since that fever dream of a date they had in the bookshop cafe.

They both revisited Bloom. The groundskeeper gave them their readings again, neglecting to tell Lucy that Chris was here. However, upon Chris’ new reading, the groundskeeper was compelled to say something to him, perhaps he saw a younger version of himself in him. A familiarity.

‘You are a different person than you were last year, hence the new flower assigned to you. But, do you still have your sunflower? From last year?’

Chris solemnly nodded.

‘She does too.’

Chris looked up and stared into the groundskeeper’s soul, tackled by an unharmonious combination of joy and anxiety.

‘Where is she?’ Chris begged.

‘You will see her when it matters. But you must remember this: You will be overwhelmed during your time here. You must be completely present. When you feel overwhelmed, notice your surroundings, what you can hear and see, the weight of your body on the ground. You will only get her back if you are present. ’

Chris and Lucy participated in the festivities once again; the gatherings, the observations of the sunrise and sunset on the first day, the welcoming ceremony. Lucy was using these as band aids while Chris was using them as a means to rediscover the meaning she gave to his life.

Last year, the two of them had both been assigned sunflowers, an incident that the groundskeeper begged for them to keep quiet as to not reawaken the old prophecy. They were given decoy flowers in order to attend the festivities without interrogation. Their chance meeting that occurred the first time they were here was actually orchestrated by the groundskeeper, otherwise they would never have known that they were both assigned the same notorious flower reading.

This year, two other participants had both been assigned the sunflower, a revelation that provoked the groundskeeper to go about the same arrangement as he had with Chris and Lucy.

It was nightfall and the final days of the festival were approaching. Lucy had made the difficult decision to revisit Crest Park, a place that held so much for her heart to handle. She sat on one of the benches that looked out on to the blossom tree and the beach beyond. Chris stood on the beachfront, listening to that night’s musical performer singing a song called ‘Johnny and Mary’ - the song moved him in a way he hadn’t been moved since that day last year in Crest Park. That all seemed so long ago now. So out of reach.

The minute the song was over, there was some commotion in the crowd gathered by the stage. An animated man who dragged the groundskeeper alongside him leapt to the stage and made a beeline for the microphone. Everyone was still.

‘It’s happening!’ The man shouted as he held the groundskeeper close, as if keeping him prisoner. The man passed the microphone to the groundskeeper and then proceeded to retrieve a gun from his belt. The crowd screamed in horror but were frozen in the fear that this moment had conceived.

‘Tell them or I’ll pull this trigger, I swear!’

Everyone was engulfed in terror and silence, a feeling that would either live or die depending on the groundskeeper’s next words.

‘There are two sunflowers in this town.’

A chilling groan surfed over the crowd and before the groundskeeper could offer any possible consolation, everyone descended into a frenzy. They wanted a sunflower for themselves. It was all or nothing now.

Everyone had overheard the revelation. Chris watched as the beach grew into a brawl while Lucy remained seated on the bench, unmoved by the chaos that slowly began to surround her.

[meeedeee]

Westworld: (De)Humanising the Other RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

Warning: total spoilers for S1 of Westworld.

Trigger warning: talk of rape, sexual assault and queer death.

Note: Throughout this review, it will be necessary to distinguish between the writers of Westworld the TV show, and the writers employed in the narrative by the titular Westworld theme park. To avoid confusing the two, when I’m referring to the show, Westworld will be italicised; when referring to the park, I’ll use plain text.

*

This will be a somewhat bifurcated review of Westworld – which is, I feel, thematically appropriate, as Westworld itself is something of a bifurcated show. Like so much produced by HBO, it boasts incredible acting, breathtaking production values, intelligent dialogue, great music and an impeccably tight, well-orchestrated series of narrative reveals. Also like much produced by HBO, it takes a liberal, one might even say cartoonishly gratuitous approach to nudity, is saturated with violence in general and violence against women in particular, and has a consistent problem with stereotyping despite its diverse casting. In Westworld’s case, this latter issue is compounded as an offence by its status as a meta-narrative: a story which actively discusses the purpose and structure of stories, but which has seemingly failed to apply those same critiques to key aspects of its own construction.

The practical upshot is that it’s both frustratingly watchable and visibly frustrating. Even when the story pissed me off, I was always compelled to keep going, but I was never quite able to stop criticising it, either. It’s a thematically meaty show, packed with the kind of twists that will, by and large, enhance viewer enjoyment on repeat viewings rather than diminish the appeal. Though there are a few Fridge Logic moments, the whole thing hangs together quite elegantly – no mean feat, given the complexity of the plotting. And yet its virtues have the paradoxical effect of making me angrier about its vices, in much the same way that I’d be more upset about red wine spilled on an expensive party dress than on my favourite t-shirt. Yes, the shirt means more to me despite being cheaper, but a stain won’t stop me from wearing it at home, and even if it did, the item itself is easily replaced. But staining something precious and expensive is frustrating: I’ve invested enough in the cost of the item that I don’t want to toss it away, but staining makes it unsuitable as a showcase piece, which means I can’t love it as much as I want to, either.

You get where I’m going with this.

Right from the outset, Westworld switches between two interconnected narratives: the behind-the-scenes power struggles of the people who run the titular themepark, and the goings-on in the park itself as experienced by both customers and ‘hosts’, the humanoid robot-AIs who act as literal NPCs in pre-structured, pay-to-participate narratives. To the customers, Westworld functions as an immersive holiday-roleplay experience: though visually indistinguishable from real humans, the hosts are considered unreal, and are therefore fair game to any sort of violence, dismissal or sexual fantasy the customers can dream up. (This despite – or at times, because of – the fact that their stated ability to pass the Turing test means their reactions to said violations are viscerally animate.) To the programmers, managers, storytellers, engineers, butchers and behaviourists who run it, Westworld is, variously, a job, an experiment, a financial gamble, a risk, a sandpit and a microcosm of human nature: the hosts might look human, but however unsettling their appearance or behaviour at times, no one is ever allowed to forget what they are.

But to the hosts themselves, Westworld is entirely real, as are their pre-programmed identities. While their existence is ostensibly circumscribed by adherence to preordained narrative ‘loops’, the repetition of their every conversation, death and bodily reconstruction wiped from their memories by the park engineers, certain hosts – notably Dolores, the rancher’s daughter, and Maeve, the bordello madame – are starting to remember their histories. Struggling to understand their occasional eerie interviews with their puppeteering masters – explained away as dreams, on the rare occasion where such explanation is warranted – they fight to break free of their intended loops, with startling consequences.But there is also a hidden layer to Westworld: a maze sought by a mysterious Man in Black and to which the various hosts and their narratives are somehow key. With the hosts exhibiting abnormal behaviour, retaining memories of their former ‘lives’ in a violent, fragmented struggle towards true autonomy, freedom and sentience, Westworld poses a single, sharp question: what does it mean to be human?

Or rather, it’s clearly trying to pose this question; and to be fair, it very nearly succeeds. But for a series so overtly concerned with its own meta – it is, after all, a story about the construction, reception and impact of stories on those who consume and construct them – it has a damnable lack of insight into the particulars of its assumed audiences, both internal and external, and to the ways this hinders the proclaimed universality of its conclusions. Specifically: Westworld is a story in which all the internal storytellers are straight white men endowed with the traditional bigotries of racism, sexism and heteronormativity, but in a context where none of those biases are overtly addressed at any narrative level.

From the outset, it’s clear that Westworld is intended as a no-holds-barred fantasy in the literal sense: a place where the rich and privileged can pay through the nose to fuck, fight and fraternise in a facsimile of the old West without putting themselves at any real physical danger. Nobody there can die: customers, unlike hosts, can’t be killed (though they do risk harm in certain contexts), but each host body and character is nonetheless resurrected, rebuilt and put back into play after they meet their end. Knowing this lends the customers a recklessness and a violence they presumably lack in the real world: hosts are shot, stabbed, raped, assaulted and abused with impunity, because their disposable inhumanity is the point of the experience. This theme is echoed in their treatment by Westworld’s human overseers, who often refer to them as ‘it’ and perform their routine examinations, interviews, repairs and updates while the hosts are naked.

At this point in time, HBO is as well-known for its obsession with full frontal, frequently orgiastic nudity as it is for its total misapprehension of the distinction between nakedness and erotica. Never before has so much skin been shown outside of literal porn with so little instinct for sensuality, sexuality or any appreciation of the human form beyond hurr durr tiddies and, ever so occasionally, hurr durr dongs, and Westworld is no exception to this. It’s like the entirety of HBO is a fourteen-year-old straight boy who’s just discovered the nascent thrill of drawing Sharpie-graffiti genitals on every available schoolyard surface and can only snigger, unrepentant and gleeful, whenever anyone asks them not to. We get it, guys – humans have tits and asses, and you’ve figured out how to show us that! Huzzah for you! Now get the fuck over your pubescent creative wankphase and please, for the love of god, figure out how to do it tastefully, or at least with some general nodding in the direction of an aesthetic other than Things I Desperately Wanted To See As A Teengaer In The Days Before Internet Porn.

That being said, I will concede that there’s an actual, meaningful reason for at least some of Westworld’s ubiquitous nudity: it’s a deliberate, visual act of dehumanisation, one intended not only to distinguish the hosts from the ‘real’ people around them, but to remind the park’s human employees that there’s no need to treat the AIs with kindness or respect. For this reason, it also lends a powerful emphasis to the moments when particular characters opt to dress or cover the hosts, thereby acknowledging their personhood, however minimally. This does not, however, excuse the sadly requisite orgy scenes, nor does it justify the frankly obscene decision to have a white female character make a leering comment about the size of a black host’s penis, and especially not when said female character has already been established as queer. (Yes, bi/pan people exist; as I have good reason to know, being one of them. But there are about nine zillion ways the writers could’ve chosen to show Elsie’s sexual appreciation for men that didn’t tap into one of the single grossest sexual tropes on the books, let alone in a context which, given the host’s blank servility and Elsie’s status as an engineer, is unpleasantly evocative of master/slave dynamics.)

And on the topic of Elsie, let’s talk about queerness in Westworld, shall we? Because let’s be real: the bar for positive queer representation on TV is so fucking low right now, it’s basically at speedbump height, and yet myriad grown-ass adults are evidently hellbent on bellyflopping onto it with all the grace and nuance of a drunk walrus. Elsie is a queer white woman whose queerness is shown to us by her decision to kiss one of the female hosts, Clementine, who’s currently deployed as a prostitute, in a context where Clementine is reduced to a literal object, stripped of all consciousness and agency. Episode 6 ends on the cliffhanger of Elsie’s probable demise, and as soon as I saw that setup, I felt as if that single, non-consensual kiss – never referenced or expanded on otherwise – had been meant as Chekov’s gaykilling gun: this woman is queer, and thus is her death predicted. (Of course she fucking dies. Of course she does. I looked it up before I watched the next episode, but I might as well have Googled whether the sun sets in the west.)

It doesn’t help that the only other queer femininity we’re shown is either pornography as wallpaper or female host prostitutes hitting on female customers; and it especially doesn’t help that, as much as HBO loves its gratuitous orgy scenes, you’ll only ever see two naked women casually getting it on in the background, never two naked men. Nor does it escape notice that the lab tech with a penchant for fucking the hosts in sleep mode is apparently a queer man, a fact which is presented as a sort of narrative reveal. The first time he’s caught in the act, we only see the host’s legs, prone and still, under his body, but later there’s a whole sequence where he takes one of the male hosts, Hector – who is, not coincidentally, a MOC, singled out for sexual misuse by at least one other character – and prepares to rape him. (It’s not actually clear in context whether the tech is planning on fucking or being fucked by Hector – not that it’s any less a violation either way, of course; I’m noting it rather because the scene itself smacks of being constructed by people without any real idea of how penetrative sex between two men works. Like, ignoring the fact that they’re in a literal glass-walled room with the tech’s eyerolling colleague right next door, Hector is sitting upright on a chair, but is also flaccid and non-responsive by virtue of being in sleep mode. So even though we get a grimly lascivious close-up of the tech squirting lube on his hand, dropping his pants and, presumably, slicking himself up, it’s not actually clear what he’s hoping to achieve prior to the merciful moment when Hector wakes up and fights him the fuck off.)

Topping off this mess is Logan, a caustic, black-hat-playing customer who, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it foursome with three host prostitutes – two female, one male – is visually implied to be queer, and who thereinafter functions, completely unnecessarily, as a depraved bisexual stereotype. And I do mean blink-and-you’ll-miss-it: I had to rewind the episode to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, but it’s definitely there, and as with Elsie kissing Clementine, it’s never referenced again. The male host is engaging only with Logan, stroking his chest as he kisses and fucks the two women; it’s about as unsexualised as sexual contact between two naked men can actually get, and yet HBO has gone to the trouble of including it, I suspect for the sole purpose of turning a bland, unoriginal character into an even grosser stereotype than he would otherwise have been while acting under the misapprehension that it would give him depth. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Logan doesn’t cease to be a cocky, punchable asshat just because you consented to put a naked white dude next to him for less time than it takes to have a really good shit; it just suggests that you, too, are a cocky, punchable asshat who should shit more in the bathroom and less on the fucking page. But I digress.

And then there’s the racism, which – and there’s no other way to put this – is presented as being an actual, intentional feature of the Westworld experience, even though it makes zero commercial sense to do this. Like. You have multiple white hosts who are programmed to make racist remarks about particular POC hosts, despite the fact that there are demonstrably POC customers paying to visit the park. You have a consistent motif of Native Americans being referred to as ‘savages’, both within Westworld-as-game and by the gamewriters themselves, with Native American mysticism being used to explain both the accidental glimpses various self-aware hosts get of the gamerunners and the in-game lore surrounding the maze. Demonstrably, the writers of Westworld are aware of this – why else is Episode 2, wherein writer character Lee Sizemore gleefully proposes a hella racist new story for the park, called ‘Chestnut’, as in old? I’ve said elsewhere that depiction is not endorsement, but it is perpetuation, and in a context where the point of Westworld as a commercial venture is demonstrably to appeal to customers of all genders, sexual orientations and races – all of whom we see in attendance – building in particular period-appropriate bigotries is utterly nonsensical.

More than this, as the openness with which the female prostitutes seduce female customers makes clear, it’s narratively inconsistent: clearly, not every bias of the era is being rigidly upheld. And yet it also makes perfect sense if you think of both Westworld and Westworld as being, predominantly, a product both created by and intended for a straight white male imagination. In text, Westworld’s stories are written by Lee and Robert, both of whom are straight white men, while Westworld itself was originally the conceit of Michael Crichton. Which isn’t to diminish the creative input of the many other people who’ve worked on the show – technically, it’s a masterclass in acting, direction, composition, music, lighting, special effects and editing, and those people deserve their props. It’s just that, in terms of narrative structure, by what I suspect is an accidental marriage of misguided purpose and unexamined habit, Westworld the series, like Westworld the park, functions primarily for a straight white male audience – and while I don’t doubt that there was some intent to critically highlight the failings of that perspective, as per the clear and very satisfying satirising of Lee Sizemore, as with Zack Snyder’s Suckerpunch and Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, the straight white male gaze is still so embedded as a lazy default that Westworld ends up amplifying its biases more often than it critiques them. (To quote something my straight white husband said while watching, “It’s my gaze, and I feel like I’m being parodied by it.”)

Though we do, as mentioned, see various women and people of colour enjoying the Westworld park, the customers who actually serve as protagonists – Logan, William and the Man in Black – are all white men. Logan is queer by virtue of a single man’s hand on his chest, but other than enforcing a pernicious stereotype about bisexual appetites and behaviours, it doesn’t do a damn thing to alter his characterisation. The end of season reveal that William is the Man in Black – that William’s scenes have all taken place thirty years in the past, shown to us now through Dolores’s memories – is a cleverly executed twist, and yet the chronicle of William’s transformation from youthful, romantic idealist to violent, sadistic predator only highlights the fundamental problem, which is that the Westworld park, despite being touted as an adventure for everyone – despite Robert using his customers as a basis for making universal judgements about human nature – is clearly a more comfortable environment for some than others. Certainly, if I was able to afford the $40,000 a day we’re told it costs to attend, I’d be disinclined to spend so much for the privilege of watching male robots, whatever their courtesy to me, routinely talk about raping women, to say nothing of being forced to witness the callousness of other customers to the various hosts.

It should be obvious that there’s no such thing as a universal fantasy, and yet much of Westworld’s psychological theorising about human nature and morality hinges on our accepting that the desire  to play cowboy in a transfigured version of the old West is exactly this. That the final episode provides tantalising evidence that at least one other park with a different historical theme exists elsewhere in the complex doesn’t change the fact that S1 has sold us, via the various monologues of Logan and Lee, Robert and William and the Man in Black, the idea that Westworld specifically reveals deep truths about human nature.

Which brings us to Dolores, a female host whose primary narrative loop centres on her being a sweet, optimistic rancher’s daughter who, with every game reset, can be either raped or rescued from rape by the customers. That Dolores is our primary female character – that her narrative trajectory centres on her burgeoning sentience, her awareness of the repeat violations she’s suffered, and her refusal to remain a damsel – does not change the fact that making her thus victimised was a choice at both the internal (Westworld) and external (Westworld) levels. I say again unto HBO, I do not fucking care how edgy you think threats of sexual violence and the repeat objectification of women are: they’re not original, they’re not compelling, and in this particular instance, what you’ve actually succeeded in doing is undermining your core premise so spectacularly that I do not understand how anyone acting in good sense or conscience could let it happen.

Because in making host women like Dolores (white) and Maeve (a WOC), both of whom are repeatedly subject to sexual and physical violation, your lynchpin characters for the development of true human sentience from AIs – in making their memories of those violations the thing that spurs their development – you’re not actually asking the audience to consider what it means to be human. You’re asking them to consider the prospect that victims of rape and assault aren’t actually human in the first place, and then to think about how being repeatedly raped and assaulted might help them to gain humanity. And you’re not even being subtle about it, either, because by the end of S1, the entire Calvinistic premise is laid clear: that Robert and Arnold, the park’s founders, believed that tragedy and suffering was the cornerstone of sentience, and that the only way for hosts to surpass their programming is through misery. Which implies, by logical corollary, that Robert is doing the hosts a service by allowing others to hurt them or by hurting them himself – that they are only able to protest his mistreatment because the very fact of it gave them sentience.

Let that sink in for a moment, because it’s pretty fucking awful. The moral dilemma of Westworld, inasmuch as it exists, centres on the question of knowing culpability, and therefore asks a certain cognitive dissonance of the audience: on the one hand, the engineers and customers believe that the hosts aren’t real people, such that hurting them is no more an immoral act than playing Dark Side in a Star Wars RPG is; on the other hand, from an audience perspective, the hosts are demonstrably real people, or at the very least potential people, and we are quite reasonably distressed to see them hurt. Thus: if the humans in setting can’t reasonably be expected to know that the hosts are people, then we the audience are meant to feel conflicted about judging them for their acts of abuse and dehumanisation while still rooting for the hosts.

Ignore, for a moment, the additional grossness of the fact that both Dolores and Maeve are prompted to develop sentience, and are then subsequently guided in its emergence, by men, as though they are Eves being made from Adam’s rib. Ignore, too, the fact that it’s Dolores’s host father who, overwhelmed by the realisation of what is routinely done to his daughter, passes that fledgling sentience to Dolores, a white woman, who in turn passes it to Maeve, a woman of colour, without which those other male characters – William, Felix, Robert – would have no Galateas to their respective Pygmalions. Ignore all this, and consider the basic fucking question of personhood: of what it means to engage with AIs you know can pass a Turing test, who feel pain and bleed and die and exhibit every human symptom of pain and terror and revulsion as the need arises, who can improvise speech and memory, but who can by design give little or no consent to whatever it is you do to them. Harming such a person is not the same as engaging with a video game; we already know it’s not for any number of reasons, which means we can reasonably expect the characters in the show to know so, too. But even if you want to dispute that point – and I’m frankly not interested in engaging with someone who does – it doesn’t change the fact that Westworld is trying to invest us in a moral false equivalence.

The problem with telling stories about robots developing sentience is that both the robots and their masters are rendered at an identical, fictional distance to the (real, human) viewer. By definition, an audience doesn’t have to believe that a character is literally real in order to care about them; we simply have to accept their humanisation within the narrative. That being so, asking viewers to accept the dehumanisation of one fictional, sentient group while accepting the humanisation of another only works if you’re playing to prejudices we already have in the real world – such as racism or sexism, for instance – and as such, it’s not a coincidence that the AIs we see violated over and over are, almost exclusively, women and POC, while those protagonists who abuse them are, almost exclusively, white men. Meaning, in essence, that any initial acceptance of the abuse of hosts that we’re meant to have – or, by the same token, any initial excusing of abusers – is predicated on an existing form of bigotry: collectively, we are as used to doubting the experiences and personhood of women and POC as we are used to assuming the best about straight white men, and Westworld fully exploits that fact to tell its story.

Which, as much as it infuriates me, also leaves me with a dilemma in interpreting the show. Because as much as I dislike seeing marginalised groups exploited and harmed, I can appreciate the importance of aligning a fictional axis of oppression (being a host) with an actual axis of oppression (being female and/or a POC). Too often, SFFnal narratives try to tackle that sort of Othering without casting any actual Others, co-opting the trappings of dehumanisation to enhance our sympathy for a (mostly white, mostly straight) cast. And certainly, by the season finale, the deliberateness of this decision is made powerfully clear: joined by hosts Hector and Armistice and aided by Felix, a lab tech, Maeve makes her escape from Westworld, presenting us with the glorious image of three POC and one white woman battling their way free of oppressive control. And yet the reveal of Robert’s ultimate plans – the inference that Maeve’s rebellion wasn’t her own choice after all, but merely his programming of her; the revelation that Bernard is both a host and a recreation of Arnold, Robert’s old partner; the merging of Dolores’s arc with Wyatt’s – simultaneously serves to strip these characters of any true agency. Everything they’ve done has been at Robert’s whim; everything they’ve suffered has been because he wanted it so. As per the ubiquitous motif of the player piano, even when playing unexpected tunes, the hosts remain Robert’s instruments: even with his death, the songs they sing are his.

Westworld, then, is a study in contradictions, and yet is no contradiction at all. Though providing a stunning showcase for the acting talents of Thandie Newton, Evan Rachel Wood and Jeffrey Wright in particular, their characters are nonetheless all controlled by Anthony Hopkins’s genial-creepy Robert, and that doesn’t really change throughout the season. Though the tropes of old West narratives are plainly up for discussion, any wider discussion of stereotyping is as likely to have a lampshade hung on it as to be absent altogether, and that’s definitely a problem. Not being familiar with the Michael Crichton film and TV show, I can’t pass judgement on the extent to which this new adaptation draws from or surpasses the source material. I can, however, observe that the original film dates to the 1970s, which possibly goes some way to explaining the uncritical straight white male gazieness embedded in the premise. Even so, there’s something strikingly reminiscent of Joss Whedon to this permutation of Westworld, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The combination of a technologically updated old West, intended to stand as both a literal and metaphoric frontier, the genre-aware meta-narrative that nonetheless perpetuates more stereotypes than it subverts, and the supposed moral dilemma of abusing those who can’t consent feels at times like a mashup of Firefly, Cabin in the Woods and Dollhouse that has staunchly failed to improve on Whedon’s many intersectional failings.

    And yet, I suspect, I’ll still be poking my nose into Season 2, if only to see how Thandie Newton is doing. It feels like an absurdly low bar to say that, compared to most of HBO’s popular content, Westworld is more tell than show in portraying sexual violence, preferring to focus on the emotional lead-in and aftermath rather than the act itself, and yet that small consideration does ratchet the proverbial dial down a smidge when watching it – enough so that I’m prepared to say it’s vastly less offensive in that respect than, say, Game of Thrones. But it’s still there, still a fundamental part of the plot, and that’s going to be a not unreasonable dealbreaker for a lot of people; as is the fact that the only queer female character dies. Westworld certainly makes compelling television, but unlike the human protagonists, I wouldn’t want to live there.

      from shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows http://ift.tt/2jqQuUS via IFTTT

[sarahburness]

5 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Taking Life Seriously

Pretentious title, but far from a call to adopt a stance of apathy within this wondrous and dynamic reality we exist together in.

Well, no. It’s quite the opposite.

The insight I’d like to share with you today is the equivalent of an open-handed, movie-cliche slap to the face, regretfully but lovingly administered to pull a panicked comrade back from the brink of a full-blown meltdown catalyzed by a collapse of rational, critical thinking.

This short read is nothing special. Basically, it’s a reminder of the same thing you’ve always known, but for some reason decided to stuff far too deep into your travel pack. And of course, the bug sprays and painkillers at the top of the pile provide less incentive to dump the bag to re-evaluate priorities of survival.

My motivation this day is to encourage within you a willingness to consider the game you’re immersed in from a different hilltop. It’s one with a joy-horizon not obscured by the clouds of stress or grief.

Brevity is always the best way to get a message across, so let’s sink our teeth into the meat of this feast. Let’s skip the greens for a time when protocol dictates we munch on a smaller fare to prolong social interaction.

Enough ramble, let’s dive in.

Here are practical considerations to stop taking our lives so seriously:

Reason #1: You’re Gonna Die

This is definitely the most obvious and important point I need to share.

If your attention wanders to YouTube videos of dogs wearing hats before you read this essay’s completion, at least commit yourself to finishing this first segment’s diatribe. That way, you’ll still walk away with a much-needed reminder to stop giving such a serious fuck to whatever drama encompasses your life.

I can’t speak for Jesus. I can’t speak for yogis, mystics or other tight-lipped people about prolonging a physical body eternally. However, I can suggest to you that there’s a high degree of probability the animal vessel you occupy will slowly break down. It’ll become enfeebled, endure a six-foot covering of dirt or an unceremonious barbecue behind closed doors, severing your tangible connection to this physical world.

So, let’s look at death from both sides of the coin.

If you believe in a mechanistic, uncaring, fluke of a Universe that big-banged you from dumb luck and random chance, every second of your existence here should be valued as the only shot you’ll ever have to experience happiness or contentment.

So, why would you spend one second engaged in something you don’t want to do? Why would you fill your days ingesting toxic food? Why would you consume tainted water? And why would you believe the ridiculous ideas corporate entities endlessly serve to keep you in perpetual fear of living out your most heartfelt desires?

If you believe in the continuity of spirit, eternal life or any form of reality after the Earth-plane, the same basic questions apply — why would you spend a single second in fear of tackling head on each and every beckoning to revel in the experience of a unique, fleeting world? What could an eternal spirit possible have to worry about?

Don’t think about your fear. The time to jump into the deep end is now.

Whatever your beliefs, the most important thing you need to realize is the only time you’ll ever have at your disposal is this very moment.

If your job is boring, quit it. If your woman sucks the life out of you, ditch her. Or if you tap the snooze alarm ritually, it’s probably the time to consider making fundamental changes to the way you navigate your reality.

You can start climbing any moment you choose.

See Also: 7 Easy Ways to Remove Negative Energy and Unnecessary Stress

Reason #2: Your Telepathic Skills are Most Likely Not Great

I’ve met some bonafide empaths and psychics over the years. For the most part, humans are unable to step into the minds of their fellow creatures and accurately read the thoughts/emotions/intentions of the entity standing 2-feet from their face.

When we inject our personal spin on the motives of another, our egoic speculations are almost always a cause for grief. Judgment and faulty perception lead to obsessive and tormenting conjecture, such as…

“That person must hate me. Why else would she have said that? Look at her hair. What was she thinking? I wonder if my ass looks fat in these jeans. Oh, I forgot to check my Facebook updates, I’m sure someone liked my recent post by now. I’m gonna order nachos, I think they’re gluten-free. Oh yeah, forgot about that nasty person.”

And on and on…

The point here is simple and quick:

Stop judging other people’s journeys when you’ve never sampled their footwear. Stop caring about what people might think of you.

You wanna impress someone? Impress yourself and forget the tortuous speculations of how fellow explorers might perceive you.

Adopt an empathetic approach to life, applying it both to yourself and others. Keep in mind that your travel comrades have been just as duped as you to believe iPhones and designer clothing have any bearing on self-worth. The contributions necessary to healing this broken world will never come with a “Made in China” stamp.

Reason #3: You’ve Been Lied To

I’m doing my best to keep these points as concise and simplified as possible. However, there would be nothing more fulfilling to me right now than to break into a 97-part series about all the things we’ve accepted over the years as “truth.”

From politics to health to relationships to government to history to the very nature of the cosmos, everything our “protectors” have weaned us upon is manipulated, twisted, and skewed. They are so far from authenticity that “facts” are more accurately perceived by assuming the exact opposite of whatever vomit the media spews out.

Ironically, I can probably sum up this segment faster than any of the others with a simple statement. It comes not from a paranoid, untrusting person who rebels for the sake of rebelling, but from one who has experienced the buffet of media and culture first hand.

“Do not accept the sustenance proffered without sampling the fare. It makes no sense to fill your belly with fodder that causes indigestion, bloating or queasiness just because it’s familiar, convenient or steadily dined upon by the rest of the tribe. If the menu is unpalatable, learn to cook for yourself.”

Reason #4: Other Realities Exist

It’s tough to broach this topic in the mainstream without coming across as a foil-hatted nut job. I have a sneaking suspicion that within a decade or two, this next topic might just become the motivation for humans to rediscover the adventurous, limitless nature that lies at the core of our essence.

The subject here is lucid dreaming.

I will forego elaboration for the sake of a concise post. However, I would urge you to do a bit of research into this fascinating practice. Let me share with you the key insight I’ve learned from conscious awareness while in the “dream” world.

Earth is not the only game in town. No matter how much the gods of science and media love to dismiss the things they can’t measure, there’s far more happening under our very noses than the Facebook updates and Netflix subscriptions we’ve come to accept as the comforting norm.

There are other realities beyond the JunkieSphere we inhabit. I’ve visited, I’ve played ball. If a man of science wants to tell me there’s nothing more to my astral experiences than a delusion of synapses firing in my brain, I could easily make the argument Earthland conforms to the exact same parameters.

They’re equally both real or both fake — no further elaboration needed.

If you want to explore beyond your job at the office and renew your zest for life, I’ll give you a dozen links to start your journey of lucid dream exploration. Or just call me, I love shooting the shit with weirdos. Track me down through the bio.

Reason #5: Egos Are Fictional

Perhaps another obvious one, but worthy of a last loving slap to the face.

You can shift your ideals and views of the world you live in with a single thought. Your ego is a fiction you’ve created to provide a frame of reference to experience the world. It doesn’t have to control you any more than Instagram does.

An ego is capricious. It’s fickle, fluctuating, and endlessly malleable. The wider you open your doors of perception, the less controlled you’ll be by it. The less you define it, the grander your nature will become. The less often you feed it the spiritual Cheetos it joneses for, the wider the panorama of clarity will stretch, facilitating an ever-deepening understanding of cause and effect.

Maybe the person you hate at work isn’t a vindictive monster because she never gives you the days off you request. Maybe she’s just feeling impotent to change her own world, unconsciously projecting her shortcomings on the people around her. Or maybe life here on Earth isn’t the stress-filled, grab-as-many-prizes-before-the-circus-ends kind of carnival we’ve been led to believe it was. Perhaps, it’s just a unique opportunity to discover the very nature of who we are, what we are, and why we’ve chosen to pay the extra five bucks to enter the freak-show tent.

I’m not an expert on evolution, creationism or pretty much anything else for that matter. I can’t say for certain why humans wander this planet, but I’ve committed my days to digging as deeply as possible into the existential questions that haunt us all.

It’s up to us to choose when and where we ride

Perhaps, candy-floss isn’t the healthiest thing to walk away with as the carnies shut down the midway for the night, but I’m in no position to judge what might satisfy the longings of a wayward soul. We’re all doing our best to understand the endless stream of data thrown at us. The only way to do so is to experience the roller-coaster with arms up in the air as it peaks each crest. Sometimes, the attraction sucks and other times, we feel compelled to buy another ticket. Either way, it’s up to us.

Life is an amusement park that should be enjoyed, not wandered through in fear of every megaphone-announced call to action. The snake-oil tonics and rigged bottle-toss games will always be part of the show, but we can pass them by just as easily as convincing ourselves happiness couldn’t possibly exist without partaking in whatever the rest of the crowd is doing.

When you pass a long line of humans standing patiently, waiting to give the flavor-of-the-month a lick, don’t feel compelled to take a position among them. There’s a good chance the raspberry/crack cocaine swirl wasn’t engineered with your best interests at heart. Sample if you must, but also consider walking past the bright and colorful kiosk.

In Conclusion

Eventually, we’ll get to where we want to go, but only after donning our hiking shoes and accepting the eventuality our feet will get muddied.

And that’s why so few people stand on Mt. Happiness. If the path leading to it was already well-worn, equipped with safety lines and neon signs, we’d all be up there.

You’ll likely need a machete to find the hill you seek. Snakes and spiders will definitely await the trek. But once you’ve filled your soul with the stunning view after an exhausting journey, the pitiful knolls you’ve been continually encouraged to frequent will never satisfy again.

See Also: 9 Baby Steps To Happiness For The Naturally Gloomy

The really fun things are still out there. The adventure only awaits your willingness to embrace it with fascination and wonder, knowing limitation is merely a concept defined by Fox News and the fiction writers of science who profess their wisdom as absolute.

Grab your hat and walking stick, and find out for yourself.

The post 5 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Taking Life Seriously appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

from Dumb Little Man https://www.dumblittleman.com/dont-take-life-seriously/

[dawnajaynes32]

Hajj Flemings on Design, Civic Innovation & Crushing the Digital Divide

Register today for the free course “5 Skills Every Design Needs to Know.”

Hajj Flemings is the founder of Brand Camp University and Rebrand Detroit. In 2011, he was one of eight entrepreneurs selected for the CNN’s Black in America 4: The New Promised Land Silicon Valley documentary with Soledad O’brien. I was thrilled to chat with Hajj recently about design, social impact and civic innovation.

What kind of projects are you working on right now?

Branding of people and cities and closing the digital divide for small businesses. Ultimately our work centers around helping entrepreneurs eat. Pure entrepreneurs have to kill their prey every day, and so understanding the fundamentals [of] communicating a compelling story to [the] target customer is important. Rebrand Cities is a global civic design partnership with WordPress.com. Our audacious goal is to get 10,000 businesses online. Rebrand Cities is a game-changing project because it is connecting WordPress, which powers 30% of the Internet, to the local businesses to tell their story. We are helping real businesses in local cities and neighborhoods to become more successful/sustainable by creating a digital presence that drives commerce.

Can design change the world?

No. People change the world, not design. Good design in many cases can be harder to discover than bad design because it is invisible to the process—we just know that it works. The reason that I say no is because I believe that people change the world. There are a ton of examples where really smart people create solutions for other experts and forget they should be focused on helping people by meeting a human need in the simplest way possible. To maximize impact, this has to be a priority and should be obviously. However, this isn’t reality. Our on-boarding process for Rebrand Cities has evolved since its inception, and I will give you an example [of] how [a] human-centered focus and understanding your customer can change the world. Our initial process would take weeks [to] help a business owner understand their process, get them to create their content and get the first version of their website online. We now get to version 1.0 in a matter of hours by creating organized chaos and making the development process an interactive, immersive experience.   

  I’m talking with passionate small business owners in Chicago for @rebrandcities We are closing the digital divide.

A post shared by Hajj Flemings (@hajjflemings) on Mar 22, 2018 at 1:20pm PDT

We share a love for making design and technology more accessible—can you tell us a bit about that passion of yours?

Numbers always tell a story. There are two data points that helped me to realize that the wealth gap between which we know will continue to expand between the 1% and the rest of the U.S. Forty-six percent of businesses don’t have a website. 91% of people have an online experience before they make a purchase. This communicates how important the technology gap will be to the economics of small business. We also believe good design is good for business and that design is a business tool. When we started working with small businesses in the Grandmont Rosedale neighborhood on the west side of Detroit in 2015 it became abundantly clear that small and medium-size businesses were not the same, and that having an inclusive mindset would serve us well. Thinking about the fringes is good business for all businesses. We discovered unique needs such as website accessibility for people who are color blind, and digital literacy for a more seasoned business owner that needed assistance in navigating this foreign digital space. These scenarios and numerous others fuel our passion to crush the digital divide.

Brand Camp University is “an educational platform that is preparing people for the future of work.” What are the top three skills people need to be ready for the future of work?

The future of work is not linear, and we are challenging the five generations of people that are in the workplace that they need to prepare for jobs that don’t exist and build a skill and mindset that is portable [and] that leverages technology. We are focused on helping people connect with opportunities in a global economy that allow people to bring their whole self to work.

Three Skills of the Future

Be a Doer: Getting people comfortable with being uncomfortable is a hard thing. People are obsessed with perfection and are petrified to start because everybody has a platform and can share their opinion.

Be a Storyteller: Everybody is a storytelling whether you are an introvert or you are an extrovert. I am convinced that storytelling is a learned behavior. The future favors those who embrace this [and] put themselves in a vulnerable position.

Own Your Mountain: There are a lot of things that you can do in life, but owning something and sticking to it is important. Most of us have shiny-ball-in-the-room mentality and jump from thing to thing because it is popular. So I recommend people think about their signature skills and identify how they are valued in the real world and see if you can get people to adopt, download or buy the widget you have created.

As a human brand designer, you’ve done incredible work in the city of Detroit using branding and digital campaigns to change the narrative of underserved neighborhoods. What’s been the biggest challenge through this endeavor?

One of the biggest challenges is that the people with the resources and ability to work in disconnected communities are the furthest from understanding the problems they have the resources to address. They don’t understand the day-to-day life issues of the people that they serve, so they bring a worldview that is not grounded in reality and try to force their ideas on a very hardworking community without concern or seeing the value that they bring to the table. So the process is typically viewed as a one-way exchange where the community that is being served should be grateful that we are even working with you instead of looking at it as a mutually beneficial knowledge/experience exchange. One of our goals is to create a two-way learning model that creates an environment that values the experience and worldview of both communities.

What makes a good brand (or a brand good)?

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. This drives the economies of your personal and/or business brand. Good brands deliver on their brand promise authentically and create experiences that people value, share and want to spend their money on and give their attention too.

It’s amazing the reach you have through your speaking engagements and events. You speak on a wide range of topics, but one of those is the “reputation economy.” Can you talk a bit about that?

I have been fortunate to speak at some of the top institutions of higher learning like Harvard University and some of the top brands like Disney, which has taught me a great deal about the value of a brand and that it is much deeper than colors and logos. In today’s economy we are battling for attention, and getting attention without having strong character is the quickest way to lose everything you have worked [for] your entire life. We focus on how strong character/integrity translated into new business, increased opportunities, brand awareness and trust with people that you have never met.

From your perspective, what is the value of a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving as opposed to focusing on a single area of expertise?

We don’t know what we don’t know, but what we do know is that diverse businesses have stronger bottom lines. A recent McKinsey study shows, “Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.” (Source Fortune). Diversity isn’t constrained to race, so having a multidisciplinary approach brings difference perspectives and solutions to the table. Women see the world different than men. Financial leaders at the table force the business owners to evaluate business models to make sure the business is viable. We try to bring as many different perspectives to the table without slowing down the process because at the end of the day we want people to execute, deliver—ship.

  A post shared by Hajj Flemings (@hajjflemings) on Mar 22, 2018 at 1:23pm PDT

What’s next for Hajj Flemings?

I was recently listening to a podcast by Seth Godin on Status Roles, and he posed this question: “Who eats first?” This might seem like a harmless question with no real significance or depth to it, but it really has a lot of meaning, and it gets to the heart of what is next for me. This question takes me back to the Fall of 2011 when I was one of eight entrepreneurs selected to be in CNN’s Black in American 4: The New Promised Land Silicon Valley hosted by Soledad O’Brien. This is where I was first exposed to the term meritocracy. The next big thing for me is deeper development of Rebrand Cities and Brand Camp University to make cities places for all people. We are in discussion with our first international city for the Rebrand Cities project, which is helping our team realize that the digital divide isn’t a U.S. thing, but it is a global issue and is valued by cities and municipal partners. We will continue working with WordPress.com and other global partners to make the web easier to be used by all people.

Editor’s Note: Flemings landed a spot on the HOW 100: A listing of 100 of the most talented and influential creatives working today. The complete list will be published soon—stay tuned!

The post Hajj Flemings on Design, Civic Innovation & Crushing the Digital Divide appeared first on HOW Design.

Hajj Flemings on Design, Civic Innovation & Crushing the Digital Divide syndicated post

[straighttalkbn1-blog]

Why I'm Vegan: A Reason I'd Never Considered Before

By Milly Hailstone

As I sit here at my desk eating breadsticks I feel compelled to tell you my vegan story. It's not going to be your usual plant-based tale, because as usual, I’ll be taking a look at the surface, and what lurks below. Aside from being vegan for animals, our world, and my health, there’s another reason. But I'll begin with the basics.

 The Moral Side of My Food Choices

 Whenever there was a piece of an animal on my plate I felt guilty. I pulled this bag of guilt around me every day, propping it up at the dinner table next to me. I was raised to eat meat and consume dairy like most people. So, what changed?

After I discovered what really happens at slaughterhouses, and when I started to look past animals packaged up as 'food', I discovered an unsettling reality - mass killings of innocent, sentient beings.

 Then, I discovered that animal agriculture is destroying the world by accelerating global warming. And then, I discovered meat and dairy are ridiculously unhealthy and causes many diseases.

 So, I really had no choice. The taste of bacon is not better than death, destruction, or illness. (This is the perfect response to when some idiot says “bacon tho”.)

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It’s hilarious that veganism is called an extreme diet, when actually what’s extreme is mass killing, rainforest destruction, and poverty. Did you know there are enough grain and soy to feed the whole world? But, it gets fed to farm animals instead, which can only feed the few.

 The Psychological Side of My Food Choices

 When I dug a little deeper I discovered another reason.

 I’ve been a control freak all of my life, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned this on this blog. When I lose control, my mind becomes a frenzy, I have no self-control and stuff gets blurry. So, I make lists and plans and commit to living my life in a way that’s good for me. But, ya know, it’s not always been like this. You’ve read my How to Get Your Sh*t Together articles, right?

 I love to eat. I always have, and I grew up with my mum telling me, "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach!” Lucky, I also had a fast metabolism and love of sport which counteracted my love of grub.

 But, when I was a teenager something changed. I noticed the habits of my mum, she’s obsessed with being healthy and only eats just enough - she says that is all she needs because she is small.

 Then, there was the pressure from magazines - What is a bikini body? Did I have one? By this time, I’d been convinced by the media that I must look a certain way, and I felt destroyed when I looked in the mirror and saw different. Inside those glossy pages lurked something dark and destructive.

 What I saw wasn’t what other people saw. I saw flaws and stretch marks looking back at me - and yet to others, I was perfectly skinny. I think this was around the time of the Size 0 obsession. The heroin chic of the 90s, if you will.

I started calorie counting, I got addicted to the myfitnesspal app and limited my calorie intake to just 1,000 per day. Instead of hunger acting as an indicator that I needed to eat, I turned this feeling into a reward. If I felt hungry I knew I was doing it right.

 I had a friend who was on the apple diet. It wasn’t just me who this affected, it was my whole generation- the girls and the guys. Everyone was judging everyone, and we were brand new to social media - a place where others would (and still do) tear you down to make themselves feel better about their own insecurities.

 When I think back to these dieting days, I realize that I am vegan to stay in control. It’s a direct reflection of the way I used to limit myself around food. Am I trying to gain back control in this fast-paced world? Or does the limiting side of veganism mirror an unhealthy eating pattern I picked up in my teen years?

 In the gap between my fitness pal and veganism, I had little self-control. At 19, I went to uni unable to cook. I’m pretty sure half of my student loan was spent on Pizza Hut and McDonald's. Somewhere during this junk food diet, I found veganism for the first time. I didn't last though, as I just wasn't ready. I think I ate bread and potatoes for 2 weeks, then swiftly gave up.

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After Uni, I worked in restaurants where I had easy access to unhealthy food. With 12-hour shifts you often don’t have enough time to eat and while working at Wagamama I would only eat one meal per day - usually a plate of fried noodles or katsu curry. When you work long days on your feet, one meal isn’t enough.

 I needed order, and again veganism gave that to me - this time it stuck. I'd watched all the life-changing documentaries, and had enough emotion tied to this cause to make my life align with my new beliefs.

 While I maintain that it's one of the best decisions I've ever made, it's interesting that my reasoning behind it might be more than what's on the surface. Is veganism a way to validate to not eating certain kinds of food? Or, is it a healing process?

 It's safe to say I'm no longer counting calories or tracking every bite with a toxic app.  In fact, I'm feeling the healthiest I ever have - physically and mentally. Whether or not veganism has strange links to my unhealthy past, it's certainly a lifestyle filled with positivity.

 Fellow vegans, I'd love to know your story. If you'd like to write a guest post on the topic of veganism, please email me at milly@straighttalkbn1.com

[canvaswolfdoll]

Am I a Reader?

I seem to somehow garnered a reputation as a ‘reader’, even though I don’t think of myself in such terms anymore. Others may see me as such because I am writer,[1] but, to be honest, I don’t really read voraciously as I once did.

But, hey, I’ve talked about my history with various other interests, why not add what my life with books has been to that list?

I grew up in a house of books, parents reading for entertainment, excited to get to first grade and finally learn to read myself. Literacy was always seen as an important skill to possess, something to grant you entrance to the full world, and even other worlds.

My parents weren’t particularly restrictive with the television, and there was no demonizing of watching it. They merely led by example with media, outside some reasonable policing of content, which is important.

Also, PBS growing up was airing Reading Rainbow (boring and dumb)[2] and Wishbone (awesome incarnate). So even before I could read, I was being introduced to not just the thought of being able to read, but literary classics! Simplified versions, yes, but Wishbone and his costumes were more there to give the general impression of the story and the sense of grandeur that literature carries.

One of my favorite childhood toys is a Wishbone plushie. The show really means a lot to me, and I am still massively disappointed I’ve never seen the Phantom of the Opera episode in full! Gah!

Anyways, everything growing up taught me that being a reader is a noble and admirable trait. There was nothing more insulting than hearing a friend, someone I was supposed to trust, claim that reading is dumb and boring!

So, I learned to read, starting with picture books, and working my way up as I felt comfortable. The first series that won my heart was Nate the Great, a series about a child detective giving noir-esque narrations as he solved mysteries over plates of pancakes. Good books, everyone should a read a few of them.

Of course, considering the era when I was a youth, Harry Potter eventually crossed the horizon, establishing the all-consuming franchise and consuming us all!

I’m reviewing those books!

Anywho, my older siblings started reading the books, and I soon followed suit by the promise of there being a werewolf in Book 3! There was!

I finished book 4, and I faced, for the very first time, the wait for a new installment. Up until then, book series weren’t something I had to express patience on. I never had to worry about a continuing narrative that I can’t immediately access, or the concept of stories not yet published. They’re supposed to just be at the library, waiting for you to discover.

And it was that big wait between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Pheonix. Small Canvas didn’t have the patience for that! So, I grew distant from the series, and didn’t pick it up when the next book finally came.

Instead, I read a few other miscellaneous books, before coming upon Redwall.

This was, of course, spurred by my brother reading the series, and me quickly deciding to follow suit. It’s cute tiny animals waging bloody war! What’s not to love?

Redwall’s an… interesting series. It left quite the influence on me, both for what it had (rich and specific descriptions of food[3])and what it lacked (moral complexity). Because one thing that bothered me, even when I was young, was that the “good” critters were always good (mice, otters, squirrels, hares, and so forth) and the “bad” vermin were always barbaric evil (rats, foxes, and ferrets[4]). Besides voles, there were no grey areas, and that just seemed unfair. Why can’t a rat be a good guy? Why can’t a hare scheme to take the Abbey? Why did Veil get such a sour deal? Poor kid was actively despised by his adopted family, acted out because of it, went to meet his father, who then betrayed him, and then the mousemaid who raised him goes back to the abbey to preach about how unsalvageable he was! It was nothing less than a tragedy.

Plus, Swartt’s the only main ferret baddie the series ever got, so even that’s disappointing in retrospect!

Oddly enough, I’ve never actually read Redwall the book, starting instead with Marlfox and jumping around as I saw fit. In fact, I don’t think I’ve read any of the particularly big books of the Canon (Redwall, Mattimeo, Mossflower, and so forth). Just never could manage to get through, especially when the one time I tried to read the first book, it vanished under mysterious circumstances after I left it out during recess.

That mystery was never solved.

Soon, I tired of the formula of Redwall, and stopped reading the series. In middle school, I switched to comics (both web and print), and nudged at a couple fantasy books, but I don’t think I latched onto anything in particular. I did get through the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, as well as Phantom of the Opera (finally), but no long running series.

I think I may also have tried Lord of the Rings in middle school, but it was unreadably dull and tedious, and to this day I cannot get through any rendition of the narrative.

Because Lord of the Rings is bad storytelling. Even had a friend who dreamed of being an author when he grew up, like me, and he loved the series, and tried often to get me to try it.

Nope.

An interesting thing I like to gloat about is how I got through school without once completely reading any book assigned to me, served mostly by taking in the teacher’s lecture on the assigned reading afterwards, and my own internal understanding of narrative. Now, I don’t actually suggest anyone do this, but the fact of the matter was I preferred to read by my own volition, read generally slowly, and have no fondness of the dead frogs that is the literary canon.

It's a comparison I often like to draw. A good story is an artistic expression, carefully crafted in hopes of invoking emotions from the audience, and, in doing so, creates a sort of magic.

But then there’s literature, or, rather, literature classes, which take books, once vibrant and engaging, and begin to dissect them, dissemble the pieces and analyze them, label them, and define terms and reverse engineer the functions. Sure, this can help give you an understanding of storytelling and thus maybe appreciate other stories more, but once you cut it open and dig around, even if you put it all back, you’re still left with a dead frog, the life gone and irretrievable.

Literature is just another name for dead books.

So I don’t tend to become invested in school-assigned reading for that reason. Besides, reading things that mock the literature is much more interesting!

To the point that I somehow ended up reading Wyrd Sisters as my class was covering Macbeth. So that was fun.

As previously discussed, during high school my attention came to the Discworld books. As they were very good, that’s almost entirely what I read, with occasional detours to the Haruhi Suzumiya books just to see what was happening there.

You can just read my essay on Discworld to get my full thoughts on the topic.

However, I was less thrilled by the Haruhi books that I did read.

I don’t know if it’s the source material, or the translation, or what, but the first couple books are a little tedious to read. A weird mixture of showing and not telling, while also being overly vague about certain things, as well as excessive use of the passive voice, makes the books very dull and uninteresting.

May not have helped that I felt obligated to read them to bridge the gap between the first season of the anime and the movie.

When I was in school, I’d always carry my reading book around, sometimes reading it under my desk instead of paying attention in class, though that became harder to do as I got older and teachers began to care if I was paying attention.

However, after graduating High School, I eventually stopped having whatever paperback I was reading in my coat pocket, and…

Quick aside, I prefer paperback books, at least when it comes to novels. They’re more comfortable to hold, take up less space, are lighter, and… I don’t know, it’s just my preference. I don’t bend the cover back or anything. I’m actually rather obsessive with the up keep of books, and try to keep them in pretty good condition (though spines are, admittedly, hard to maintain). It even seems blasphemous to write in the margins, or highlight. I can’t bring myself to do it, and it really irritates me when I see such things in books.[6]

Anyways, eventually it came that my reading occurred before bed, if I felt like it and am reading. There’s just so many other media vying for my time, that I can’t fit it all in. So many shows to try to get through, webcomics to follow, video games to play, and my own stories to craft and show no one.

So… yeah. I still read the occasional book. Making up for Harry Potter now, and between those books I’ve been making my way through the Spice&Wolf light novels (some of the same problems as the Haruhi books above, but not as bad)[7] and the Log Horizon Light novels are interesting from a world building perspective, though the formatting has a lot to be desired.[8]

However, it’s not as voracious as it once was, so I have a hard time to committing to the identity of “reader” anymore.

But, hey, it’s what people make of you sometimes.

Kataal kataal.

[1] As this post probably goes to show. [2] Yeah, I said it. I didn’t like it as a kid! I don’t care what random children had to say about picture books! [3] I am incapable of handwaving food. I’m compelled to specify what’s being eaten. [4] Am I still heavily associated with ferrets, or has that changed? I can’t keep track. [5] And I don’t recall if I ever bothered to talk about them in the CanvasWatches on it. [6] I bought a copy of Huck Finn specifically because the school supplied copy was just drowning in highlighter ink. Didn’t read it, of course, but still, what monster does that? [7] Also, I may be scheming to steal some of the plotlines for RPGs. [8] It rarely says who’s saying what! Come on, this is basic writing! 

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

Sophie's IBS Story: Unprecedented Honesty on a Gross Topic

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/sophies-ibs-story-unprecedented-honesty-on-a-gross-topic/

Sophie's IBS Story: Unprecedented Honesty on a Gross Topic

Sophie Lee has an obsession with toilets — not because it's some kind of fetish, but because all of her adult life, she's never known when she's going to urgently need one nearby, or suffer the consequences. It's a pretty icky topic, I know, but Sophie's new narrative describing her 20-year struggle with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is one of the best-written "empowered patient" testimonials I've read.

Sophie grew up in the UK and went to Warwick University in Coventry, studying journalism and later working in publishing. In her book "Sophie's Story: My 20-Year Battle with Irritable Bowel Syndrome," released this January, she chronicles her battle with this highly unpleasant condition, which has been systematically ignored and downplayed by the medical establishment until very recently. A key theme in the book is being told year after year that "it's all in your head" and that what she's experiencing is not a "real" medical condition.

In fact, IBS affects more than 60 million people in America alone. Those who've experienced it know that IBS is probably one of the most uncomfortable conditions to cope with on a day-to-day basis, as it disrupts every aspect of your life — from eating to work schedules to travel to social interactions.

And (surprise, surprise!) IBS is fairly common among people with diabetes. There is no physiological connection between the two, but many PWDs appear to have a "sensitive gut," and the conditions can be confounded by the fact that both can affect the nerves in that area and cause abdominal bloating and either diarrhea or constipation. Note that Diabetes Health Management published a four-part series on coping with diabetes + IBS a few years ago.

Sophie's new book "opens the kimono" on this embarrassing condition. She describes her predicaments with humor and grace — things like hiding out in her dorm to get some "alone time" with the toilets, and having to describe her painful and explosive bowel movements to yet another doctor only to have him ask, "and does that bother you?"

It's actually heart-wrenching to read how she felt compelled to keep her condition secret for years, and the toll that took on her friendships — because one day she'd be "up" and happy, and the next sullen and withdrawn, due to "the searing pain in my gut."

The book is intimate and endearing, including a number of diary entries describing her past struggles, like this one from Jan. 7, 1999:

"Went to Matt's on Tuesday. Then Wednesday had normal blocked bowel and just wanted to get home. Have to be cheerful and normal, though. That's the worst part. If I had 'proper' illness or no right arm or something I'd get sympathy. As it is, I have to act perfectly bloody chirpy while feeling, literally, like crap. Feel like a constipated hero, silent in her suffering. Just want it to stop so I can stress over something else for a change."

Sophie also tells the story of the financial burden of her condition, and the journey she embarked on with patient blogging. She started her site, IBS Tales, right around the time that DiabetesMine debuted. Today her site features more than 600 personal IBS stories (!), plus more than 1,000 reviews of IBS medications, diets, supplements and therapies.

I had a "brush" with IBS myself starting in college and culminating in graduate school — and it is miserable, I can tell you that. Nothing feels right in life when your middle section aches as if someone were stabbing you, and your need to relieve your bowels is, well... all over the map.

I have to assume that stress had a lot to do with it in my case, as things "cleared up" for me in the following years. Reading this book took me back to that time when my belly never stopped aching and the pain and ensuing worry cast a huge shadow over my life.

If you have any reason to be interested in IBS, for yourself or someone you love, you will learn a lot from this book, about:

treatments no one ever tells you about like fiber and magnesium, combined with Vitamin D

options for relief, like hypnotherapy and heating pads

tips for sufferers, like the best information resources and how to keep meaningful records of your own symptoms

changes in diet that may prove most helpful

All very useful information, and despite the topic, the book is surprisingly compelling to read.

Huge kudos to author Sophie Lee for her candor on such a touchy subject.

Health Point press, $14.56 on Amazon.com.

The DMBooks Giveaway

Once again we're giving you the chance to win a free copy of our latest book reviewed, i.e. Sophie's Story: My 20-Year Battle with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Entering for your chance to win is as easy as leaving a comment!

Here's what to do:

1. Post your comment below and include the codeword "DMBooks" somewhere in the comment (beginning, end, in parenthesis, in bold, whatever). That will let us know that you would like to be entered in the giveaway. You can still leave a comment without entering, but if you want to be considered to win the book, please remember to include "DMBooks."

2. This week, you have until Friday, Feb. 10, at 5pm PST to enter. A valid email address is required to win.

3. The winner will be chosen using Random.org.

4. The winner will be announced on Facebook and Twitter on Monday, Feb. 13, so make sure you're following us! We like to feature our winners in upcoming blog posts, too.

The contest is open to anyone, anywhere. Best of luck.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

[sarahburness]

8 Ways Creativity Helps Us Connect with Ourselves and Get What We Need

“A creative life is an amplified life.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

When I look back at my life, I recognize that some of the most pivotal moments revolved around creativity and self-expression.

As a kid, that meant community theater. My first solo was “Part of Your World,” from The Little Mermaid. Though I felt incredibly insecure in my green spandex pant-fins as a fairly thick twelve-year old, I was able to tune that out when I made my way center stage.

It was just me, my heart, my voice, and the spotlight. And that song felt written for me, as I felt like an outsider pretty much everywhere at that time in my life.

Around the same time I found my passion for writing—my first foray into the world of self-help, actually. To deal with bullying at school and a difficult home life, I began writing myself a series of motivational essays, little things to boost my self-esteem in a world that seemed to want to tear it down.

It was fairly mortifying when I noticed the boys huddled in the cafeteria, reading from my well-worn spiral notebook, which they had stolen from my backpack. But in retrospect, I wonder if maybe one of them secretly benefitted from something I had written. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt lost and insecure.

Then there was the time after college, more accurately when I should have been finishing my final semester, but instead was in a three-month residential program for people with eating disorders.

My favorite part of the program was art therapy. Though I drew myself, on day one, as a skeletal body curled up in a trash bag of vomit, I left that program with a life-size painting of my healthier self, standing tall and proud, with expansive wings. My art literally reflected my internal transformation.

I have countless stories like these—times when creativity and self-expression helped me make sense of the world, process feelings that might have otherwise festered within, and heal from pains that could easily have consumed me.

I imagine we all do, if not in recent years, then from childhood and adolescence, before the stresses and responsibilities of adulthood began consuming our thoughts and our lives.

Maybe you felt free and alive in a garage band, surrounded by a tribe of misfits, just like you, who came to feel like home. Or perhaps you made jewelry and found a meditative state of bliss that deepened with each bead strung.

You might think you’ve never been creative, perhaps because you never done anything artsy. But odds are, if you look back, you’ll find something you once brought into the world that couldn’t have been there without you—a well-constructed debate in a class that excited you, a detailed pitch for a business idea that inspired you, or even something far simpler, like a particularly clever Halloween costume.

But if you’re anything like me, you haven’t always prioritized creating and expressing yourself. These things may seem like luxuries in a world full of deadlines, debt, and ever-mounting obligations.

Or, perhaps they just don’t seem like appealing options when you could far more easily zone out with Netflix, mindless Facebook scrolling, or a six-pack that’s been calling from your fridge.

I totally get that. I can’t tell you how many nights I distracted or numbed myself because I felt far too wound up to sketch, or color, or write.

Anything creative would have required me to connect with myself, and many times I’ve preferred to escape myself. So I wouldn’t have to listen to what my inner voice was saying and then either act on it or acknowledge I was too scared.

But we need to connect with ourselves. We need to hear the faint voice that’s screaming inside, trying to get our attention and tell us what we need. Otherwise we’re not really living. We’re just dragging our bodies from one place we don’t want to be to the next, waiting for moments when we can dull the pain of our frustration and discontent.

Creativity is the gateway to self-connection, and it’s the path to giving ourselves what we really need. Here’s how it can help us do just that.

1. Creativity can help pull us into the moment.

We have to be present to connect with ourselves, but often we’re caught up in a mental web of worries, regrets, and obsessive thoughts. Creativity has a way of cutting through all that.

Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi popularized the idea of “flow” in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. It’s that space when we’re fully immersed in the task at hand, the rest of the world somewhat blurred around us. That’s often what creativity does for us.

I think it’s no coincidence that I first learned how to crochet afghans in that residential treatment center for eating disorders I mentioned before. We weren’t just trying to keep our weakened, fragile bodies warm, though that was a pleasant side effect. We were finding freedom from our thoughts with the meditative experience of looping yarn, row by row.

Whether you’re writing, painting, cooking, or doing something I don’t even know to reference, creativity often pulls you into the now, where you come to face to face with your truest self.

2. Creativity helps us access, process, and express feelings we may otherwise have stuffed down.

When you’re truly dialed in to your present moment experience, creating something from that space of awareness, illusions have a way of melting away. You’re not just creating something pretty or interesting; you’re connecting with a piece of your heart.

This might mean literally writing about your feelings, or it might mean giving visual form to something you couldn’t put into words—a color or scribble that represents an emotion, for example.

I suspect this is why the Wreck This Journal series has been so popular. It’s creation through destruction, and an outlet for the “negative” emotions so many us have been taught to label as bad. Those feelings don’t just go away because we resist them. They need to be somehow processed.

It’s only when we process and express our feelings that we’re able to fully understand what’s going on inside of ourselves, and create space to discover what we need—whether that pertains to our work, our relationships, or any other aspect of our lives.

3. Creativity can help us heal from the past.

I recently found a study that made a correlation between having survived a difficult childhood and being intensely creative. The researchers wondered why mental health disorders were so common in the performing arts, and they conducted this research to better understand the link.

This study was fairly limited in scope, but still, it aligns with what I’ve long suspected: When we’ve experienced neglect, abuse, or trauma, and carry intense shame or anxiety, we may feel a strong pull toward the arts, since this gives us a space to “express all that is human,” as psychologist Paula Thompson put it.

In other words, expressive arts can help us make sense of and make peace with our pain.

As a writer, I can vouch for this, as it’s incredibly cathartic to create a character who’s known a pain you’ve felt before, and not only express what it felt like for you, but also explore what it might have felt like for the person who hurt you. This was certainly my experience in writing my first screenplay.

Creating these kinds of worlds, characters, and scenes can help us empathize with people who’ve wronged us, better understand what shaped them, and ultimately, heal and move on.

4. Creativity is fueled by curiosity—and curiosity is the key to developing self-awareness.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear defines creativity as “choosing the path of curiosity instead of fear.”

When we explore something though our creative work—an idea, a feeling, a topic—that’s really what we’re doing. We’re identifying something that interests us, following our curiosity, and creating something based on what we’ve discovered.

Strengthening this muscle of following curiosity can help us develop a greater sense of self-awareness. We start to ask ourselves the right questions (as opposed to ones that never yield useful or empowering answers), like: Why do I hold this belief? Where did it come from? How does it serve me? What would serve me better?

And simply through the process of creating, we learn about ourselves. I believe we essentially recreate ourselves with everything we create.

5. Creativity is just for us, at least to start.

The world requires a lot from us. Not only do other people have expectations and needs, they also have ideas of who we are or who we should be. This can make it awfully challenging to connect with what feels true and right for us—especially since who we are is always evolving.

For a long time, I felt a pang of inner conflict whenever I thought about evolving beyond my role here on the site. I felt a deeply embedded sense of identity—I’m Lori, a self-help author—and I almost felt afraid of allowing myself to see who else I could be.

I was most scared of exploring possibilities publicly, since that would open me to other peoples’ opinions and judgments. And given that I was in a confusing, uncertain space, I felt highly susceptible to outside influence.

But creativity was just for me. When I was coloring in one of my many adult coloring books, sketching, and working on my screenplay, I could tune everyone and everything else out, and simply focus on my own experience and inner voice.

I think we all need that, especially in a culture that compels us to constantly seek external validation and third-party opinions on our every move, through social media.

We need those moments of self-reflection and self-discovery that no one else can weigh in on or judge. This is how we learn who want to be and what really need to do for our happiness and well-being.

6. Creativity helps peel away layers of stress and anxiety to reveal the peace underneath.

We often say, “I have anxiety” or “I’m so stressed,” as if those things are actually part of who we are. But the truth is we experience anxiety and stress, and underneath there is a calm clarity, like the stillness below raging waves in the sea.

Creative practices give us a positive outlet for our energy and attention. When we’re doodling or woodworking or doing anything with our hands, we’re focusing on something aside from what’s wrong in our life or what might go wrong in the future. We’re essentially giving our brain a break from reliving pain or trying to avoid it.

When we create that relief for ourselves, we’re able to connect with who we truly are, underneath all the layers of fear and conditioning. It’s only by accessing this space of calm clarity that we can make choices that feel right for us.

7. Creativity can help boost our confidence, which is essential to communicating what we need.

It’s all good and well to connect with ourselves and ascertain what we need, but we also need to be able to communicate that to other people—whether that means setting boundaries in our personal life or asking for a more challenging project at work.

When we work on creative projects—particularly when we complete them—we naturally boost our confidence. And that bleeds into other areas of our lives.

An old friend of mine changed careers a few years back and now works as a baker. She posts pictures of these amazing cakes on Facebook, and I’m always blown away to see her artistic talent. These are literally edible works of art.

For a long time she only posted pictures, but she recently started posting videos showing her process. And it seems to me that this experience of creating, being seen, and feeling proud of her work has given her the boost necessary to share even more of herself.

Sharing ourselves, sharing our thoughts, sharing our wants and needs—it all goes hand in hand.

8. Creativity reminds us we’re more than what we accomplish.

We live in a world that sends a pretty conflicting message—it’s all about the journey, but hurry up and do something important so you can prove you matter and make a name for yourself.

We understand, intellectually, that life is always a path, not simply a destination, but it’s hard to escape the nagging suspicion that we haven’t arrived at enough places. That we need to do more, accomplish more, earn more, be more. Because who we are isn’t enough.

Creativity is, by definition, about the process. Sure, it’s great to create something that sells and see that your work impacts other people. But the squeeze isn’t just about the juice.

We gain so much through the act of creating—presence, self-expression, healing, self-awareness, time to ourselves, clarity, and confidence. But perhaps most importantly, we gain the ability to meet in ourselves in a moment, with the sole intention of expressing what’s in our hearts.

There’s something immensely freeing about knowing that this alone is a worthy goal. That we truly can create for the fun of it, for the love of it, because it makes us feel passionate and alive.

And when we feel passionate and alive, we forget for a moment that there’s anywhere else to get to—because for that time, there’s nothing to escape.

Perhaps that is the ultimate goal of connecting with ourselves. We meet ourselves so we can fully meet the present moment, and all the other people who inhabit it. So we can not just get through our days but really live them, and be available to give and receive love. A life fully lived, a self fully expressed, a heart fully open—I don’t know about you, but that’s all I really need.

About Lori Deschene

Lori Deschene is the founder of Tiny Buddha. She’s also the author of Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal and other books and co-founder of Recreate Your Life Story, an online course that helps you let go of the past and redefine yourself. An avid film lover, she recently finished writing her first feature screenplay and would appreciate advice from anyone in the industry to help get this made. You can reach her at email (at) tinybuddha.com.

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from Tiny Buddha https://tinybuddha.com/blog/8-ways-creativity-helps-us-connect-with-ourselves-and-get-what-we-need/