#has anyone else ever depicted the experience of existing and performing at the same time as this woman

[angelsh0143]

Playlist for The Careers

Groupie Love - by Lana del Rey. "Every time you look up i know what you're thinking of, you want my groupie love"

National Anthem - by Lana del Rey. "We're on a quick, sick rampage, winin' and dinin', drinkin' and drivin', excessive buyin', overdose and dyin', on our drugs, and our love, and our dreams, and our rage, Blurrin' the line between real and fake"

Carmen - by Lana del Rey. "Only seventeen, she walks the streets so mean"

Born to Die - by Lana del Rey. "Keep making me laugh, let's go get high, the road is long, we carry on, try to have fun in the meantime"

Ultraviolence - by Lana del Rey. "Cause I'm your jazz singer and you're my cult leader"

Cruel World - by Lana del Rey. "I shared my body and my mind with you, that's all over now, I did what I had to do"

Pretty When You Cry - by Lana del Rey. "All those little times you said that I am your girl, you make me feel like your whole world"

Gladiator - by Jann. "Show us some good entertainment, victory is your only payment"

Swan Lake, Op.20 - by Tchaikowsky.

Primadonna - by Marina. "Going up, going down, down, down, anything for the crown, crown, crown"

Froot - by Marina. "I've been saving all my summers for you"

Ka-Ching! - by Shania Twain. "All we ever want is more, a lot more than we had before"

American Whore - by Lana del Rey. "I haven't done a cartwheel since I was nine"

[loosenedidylls]

Blessings, Curses, Autism

My earliest memories are of waiting rooms with musty carpets and buckets of donated, broken toys. I guess it was worse for my parents, who had nothing to stare at but walls and trashy lifestyle magazines. Eventually, the professionals decided I had a condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, and there was one thing they wanted me to understand:

“It’s a blessing, not a curse.”

If someone asked me to list blessings off the top of my head, I’d mention 20/20 vision, pitch-perfect hearing, or George Foreman’s chin — not a neurological disorder that transforms the most natural stages of personal development into a confusing struggle. In hindsight, I would have preferred more concrete advice than ‘it’s a blessing, not a curse.’ Something like:

“Watch out for the train!”

…But the quippy slogan is what stuck. My parents dispensed it like a cheap plaster, and I still don’t know whose benefit it was for — mine, or theirs. What I do know, is that I never once believed them: I felt I was being brushed aside, or told to accept something blatantly untrue. Besides, children don’t care to question whether they’re blessed or cursed, so it was an answer to a question that hadn’t been asked. Existentialism is for adults trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Being an Autistic Child.

Autism is not a superpower. Thanks to certain pieces of popular media, you might think of autistic people as quirky-yet-brilliant detectives, awkward-yet-sexy hackers (always female), or nonverbal children with a deep, instinctive connection to whatever animal or alien the protagonists are trying to communicate with. Often, people with severe autism are plot devices in the same vein as a forbidden orb or set of nuclear launch codes. Instead of damsels waiting for Bruce Willis to save them, they’re objects waiting for Bruce Willis to understand them.

A lot of autistic people are brilliant academically, though not for the reasons you might think. A common feature of autism is hyper-fixating on ‘special interests’, obsessing over a subject until one has learned everything about it, before moving on to the next. Very few people become maths geniuses this way; more often they become diehard Sonic fans or start giving lots of money to Games Workshop. Here are a few of the phases I went through:

-          Thomas the Tank Engine.

-          Pokémon.

-          Old English monster myths.

-          Naruto.

-          Peter Jackson’s King Kong (both the movie and the video game).

-          Bleach (the anime, thankfully, not the cleaning product).

Fairly normal interests for a young person, right? Now remember the hyper-fixation part. People with Asperger’s tend to focus on certain interests at the expense of others, and those ‘rejected interests’ are usually vital for social development. Now remember that high school is a psychopathic hellscape crawling with cruel little monsters ready to vent their newfound territorial instincts on anyone who doesn’t fit in. The kid who wants to discuss the depiction of brontosauruses in a sort-of-okay remake of a 1933 movie isn’t doing himself any favours — constant bullying drives him even deeper into reclusive interests and solitary hobbies, and from there, it’s the luck of the draw whether those hobbies resonate with any of the kids around him.

I’ve always known a lot about things no one knows about, and nothing about things everyone knows about. This, along with the fact that a lack of social life makes it easy to focus on one’s studies, creates the illusion that some autistic kids are eccentric geniuses-in-the-making. Parents — especially the parents of autistic children — are quick to latch onto any display of intelligence. They watch intently for any sign their long struggle is paying off, and when it happens, they praise their child endlessly, reinforcing behaviour patterns both good and bad. Because adults told me I was intelligent, I told other children I was intelligent, and you can imagine how well that went.

This misapprehension — confusing a bunch of random trivia for genius — followed me into high school, hurting me all the while, which is ironic, because it was the only positive way I could think about myself.

I’m lucky to have found books and writing as lifelong passions, but that almost didn’t happen; in fact, I used to despise any writing task the teacher set for me, to the point of outright refusing to do the work. In my defence, I was trying very hard to be somewhere else at the time — mentally, that is. The idea of putting my feelings on paper, for all to see? I couldn’t conceive of anything more terrifying.

Harry Potter changed things. I was gifted The Deathly Hallows when it was first published, and even though I had no idea what was going on in the story (I hadn’t even seen The Order of the Phoenix yet), I thought it was wonderful — maybe because I was getting a sneak peek into a future movie. Since then, I’ve always had a book close at hand, and it wasn’t long before I started writing my own novels (more on those another time).

 Voracious reading was, technically, another un-social activity that would consume my waking hours, but at least it was productive. My grades improved dramatically. I got good at writing essays. I became better at expressing myself, and I started to consider other people’s points of view. I made friends, lifelong bonds. I wouldn’t say I was happy at that stage of life — bullies tend to push back against things like improved mental health — but at least I was growing.

Looking back, I can’t help but wonder how close I came to disaster. I was 13 or so. If I’d left it any later, I doubt the outcome would have been so peachy. There are plenty of autistic adults with no friends, no employable skills, no human contact but ageing parents and rare, fleeting therapy sessions. Many of these people are quirky and brilliant, but there’s no happy ending for them.

Being an Autistic Adult.

Autism never goes away. It never gets ‘better’. It isn’t curable because it’s not a disease, despite what the vaccine deniers might tell you; autism is an intrinsic part of my neurological makeup, and living with it is a process of compromises.

I had to accept, early on, that I’m not the same sort of human being as the people around me. My brain is a different brand of brain: it makes different connections, processes different bits of data at different speeds. Things that seem obvious to you, need to be explained to me. I struggle to read a room, and I’m never quite sure if the person I’m talking to would really rather I shut up.

Put simply, my childhood experiences made me keenly aware of myself as an outsider. I need to watch for people’s reactions to anything I say or do, all the while navigating a maze of social cues and left-unsaids — but sooner or later, I’m always going to slip up. When you are differently-brained, it’s easy to misinterpret instructions, or to misjudge which thread of discussion is most important; and when you’re processing so much data at any one time, small-yet-vital points are going to slip under the radar. The result is being told off, being laughed at (‘laughing with you, not at you’ is another fun slogan I’ve learned to endure), and generally feeling stupid or useless for overlooking one point of data among hundreds.

 As I grew into an adult, I got better at performing normal. Nowadays, only those who spend a lot of time around me can spot the signs of my condition: I seem confident, funny, sympathetic, and I make friends easily. As I write this, I can’t help but feel uneasy: it makes me wonder, and not for the first time, how much of my personality is genuine. In high-stress situations, the generic piece of advice is ‘relax and be yourself.’ Succeeding in life as an autistic person means learning not to be yourself, or at least creating a version of yourself that can exist in public — so, where does the real me end, and the performance begin? Are they one and the same? I’ll never know the answer to that question.

Being an autistic adult, then, means pretending I’m not autistic for the benefit of other people. It’s a lifelong, often exhausting performance, and the temptation to retreat into my shell is ever present. But, just like anyone else, I long for human contact, so the compromise is a necessary one.

Blessings & Curses: Redux.

Terry Pratchett wrote that humans need to learn to believe the little lies so they can believe in big ones. There’s something I wish I knew during the bad years; that I was far from the only person suffering from my condition. My parents were stumbling in the dark just like me, except they had to pretend everything was under control.

My dad confided in me, recently, how he used to cry — a lot — during those days when I would return from school after another worst day of my life, talking about footballs thrown at my head, being cornered and verbally abused, or being removed from class after another tantrum. These were practically daily occurrences, and they’ve left their lifelong marks on me, but I’ve never lacked for brilliant people willing to help, people who were alongside me in my suffering. Raising a child is hard, and raising a neurodivergent child is even harder. Can I blame my parents for wanting to believe in blessings, and not curses?

Most of the time, those bad years seem like a distant memory. I don’t see autism as my blessing or my curse; it’s just a part of me — a frustrating, limiting, often embarrassing part of me, but one just as vital as my eye colour or ethnicity. I’ve come to accept it and be content despite it, and I suppose that’s the best outcome I could hope for.

[angrycowboy]

So my original idea was to just tackle my thoughts on RNM’s portrayal of Michael Guerin’s bisexuality, which is something I have loved a lot. But then 2x06 aired, and we got some beautiful insight into Alex Manes, and I had to shift gears a bit to include that.

Because I know tensions regarding this episode are high, consider this a warning - I am going to talk about Michael and Alex, and a bit about the airstream scene in 2x06. And I am going to discuss how it has resonated with me in a positive way. But mostly, this is about how sexuality is complicated, and how amazing it is to see depictions on television that truly make me feel seen.

One of my favorite things about Michael Guerin, and about how RNM has chosen to portray his bisexuality, is that it’s not obvious. He doesn’t feel the need to talk about it, or discuss it - and in fact, only offers it up to Isobel in 1x10 as she’s questioning her own feelings in an effort to make her feel more comfortable. Later in 1x11, he snaps at Max because well, Max has just poked and prodded at him talk (and they’re stuck in the bunker together with nothing else to do). And someone who isn’t comfortable in who they are doesn’t say things like, “It’s not that complicated.” That is something firmly in the camp of yeah, this is who I am, what of it? Because make no mistake, it is incredibly important to me to hear characters like Michael Guerin self-identify on screen as bisexual.

Part of this portrayal can of course, also be attributed to Michael’s upbringing in the foster care system, where talking about himself was never encouraged or allowed. Because I don’t think, given how it is repeatedly reinforced that Michael shunned most aspects of humanity on Earth, that he was ever ashamed of his sexuality. Though I do believe that said upbringing did affect his own feelings of self-worth, and how he saw himself in the eyes of others.

Something I’ve seen mentioned a lot are two interactions we see on screen: between Alex & Maria in 1x10, and between Maria & Liz in 1x13, and the idea that there is “outing” of Michael. And while, I do understand and respect a lot of those arguments, especially regarding their importance regarding the LGBTQ community as a whole, something I don’t see discussed are people who don’t necessarily want to have a formal coming out, or who don’t feel the need to initiate those conversations regarding their sexuality. Even though yes, both Alex and Maria do technically out Michael (though neither do it with any malicious intent), I don't believe that Michael himself would care that other people know he is bisexual (his feelings for Alex are a different story entirely). And part of that may be that he doesn't believe anyone else thinks of him that much to even discuss him due to that upbringing he had, and also because the act of coming out would involve the feeling of being under a microscope (thanks for that wording, Riley), and Michael Guerin would definitely want to avoid that.

But back to my original point - at no point during Season 1 does Michael Guerin give the impression that he is ashamed of his sexuality - the lack of bringing it up first does not read that way to me. It reads more as Michael sees it simply as part of who he is, and that’s it. He can’t change it, and he’s already different (he’s a literal alien, ffs), so why worry about it. It very much reminds me of how I have viewed my own sexuality for years - it is simply just part of who I am. I have never felt the need to sit anyone down and announce my sexuality - in fact, I came out to my mother as I was walking out the door to go on a date. She asked what his name was, and I just replied what her name was.

But there seems to exist this idea within the LGBTQ community that every person needs to have a “coming out.” That we need to be completely in control of who knows, and how they find out, and when they find out, which is not something I agree with completely. Now, also know that I understand the importance of this idea to many, because of rampant homophobic attitudes that remain present within our society. But I see very few people discussing and supporting those of us who would rather not have to announce it in some grand way - because is this not also allowing someone to control their narrative? It has definitely made me wonder how different my own acceptance of my sexuality could have been had I believed that it wasn’t a requirement for me to come out to the people in my life (an idea which sends my anxiety into a tailspin, tbh).

Again, this is just my perspective regarding the overall portrayal of Michael’s bisexuality. It is not meant to act as a correct version, just sharing why I have particularly enjoyed what RNM has done.

But it was not Michael Guerin that made me want to write fanfic, and it was not Michael Guerin that truly made me love this show - it was in fact, Alex Manes. It was Alex Manes, who is confrontational, who is analytical, who needs facts first and who lives so much within his own head, that truly drew me into this show. Alex Manes who very clearly has struggled not with the fact that he is gay, but with that outward expression of his sexuality. In canon, this is very much due to the trauma of his childhood, to growing up in an abusive household that rejected everything about who he was as a person, and tried to force him into a box that was very much not who he is. And while I did not have that kind of upbringing, the idea of believing you won’t be accepted even among the people who should love you unconditionally is a universal feeling within the LGBTQ community. 

Alex’s talk with Maria in the truck is perhaps some of the most relatable queer representation I’ve ever seen. Because it dives into the different types of love and attraction and how not every touch between two people needs to be sexual in nature. And it lays out very plainly how important it is to have trust between people. But it’s also about recognizing what you do want, and accepting that for yourself. And that conversation is so important toward understanding what happens later on in the Airstream.

Because Alex, due to his upbringing, doesn’t believe that he is worthy of being loved in that way. When Maria comforts Michael over the realization that he could have lost both of them, Alex says he should go, not because he doesn’t want to be there. He says it because he feels like he shouldn’t be allowed to be there, to want to be there. Alex feels like an intrusion, even though he’s gone through the same horrifying ordeal and he’s with two people he loves and feels safe around. Maria recognizes that immediately, and moves back to Alex in order to give him the safety he needs as well. Maria is acting in regards to both of the boys love languages - Alex needs that physical touch of reassurance (kissing him), Michael needs to hear it verbally (”it’s okay”). And furthermore, they all need each other in that moment (”I just want us all safe”).

But it is specifically Alex’s speech in the truck earlier, about touch and self-acceptance that has me sobbing every time I watch it. Because even though I got my first crush on a girl as a teenager, it wasn’t until years later that I actually allowed myself to act on that. It was only years later that I learned just how different my attraction toward men and women really was, that I enjoyed different things for different reasons from the different sexes and that was okay. So that speech has just really resonated with me as a bisexual woman who struggled for years with acceptance of her sexuality, of being able to act on it, and it makes me incredibly happy to see a television show (A CW SHOW ABOUT COWBOY ALIENS OK) conquering these things in such a relatable way.

All of this ended up making me go back to something Chasing wrote last year about Michael’s bisexuality, and the portrayal we’re seeing, and something she said in her meta: “No one is harder on queer representation and queer media than queer people - and I get it. We’ve had so much bad representation and we’re sick of it and that’s understandable. But it’s turned into this thing where every slice of representation has to be Perfect or it’s Garbage, and it’s leading creators to not want to try because they’re so harshly run off every time they do. And when they don’t try, they don’t learn, and when they don’t learn, they don’t do better.” So maybe the rep isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a valiant effort being made to reach out to an underrepresented community. And for me personally, the depiction doesn’t have to be perfect, because people aren’t perfect, and sexuality isn’t one size fits all. What may make one person feel seen and understood, another may not see themselves represented at all - but that’s okay. Because with more representation in media, comes different tellings and stories, and comes different ways people can relate because the queer community is not a monolith. We all look at things through different lenses and experiences, but it becomes hurtful when those who don’t see themselves represented in a specific piece of media start telling those who do that they are wrong. And I wish more people would take that into consideration during discussions and criticisms.

Finally, I want to end with this gif, because woo boy. This face and that look. I know that look. I have made that look. This look is so goddamn recognizable and familiar. Because there’s also something about knowing you’re watching an actor who has probably also gone through a lot of these same feelings the character is expressing, that it just comes through in their performance and makes it all the more relatable and real (and especially how even the script itself makes it obvious it was written by people in the queer community).

[amillioninprizes]

An entirely too long post on how to fix Veronica Mars

So, anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows: 1) What a massive Veronica Mars fan I was and 2) how distraught I’ve been over the most recent season that debuted on Hulu in July. I’ve been pretty angry about it since it dropped, but the first month after I was pretty occupied with real life stuff. Now that I’m more settled, I’ve found myself getting sadder and angrier over time with just how terrible S4 was and what an obvious fuck you to longtime fans it was. It feels dumb to be so upset over a tv show, but this show got me through a lot over the past 8 years, and I feel like it’s been taken away from me.

 It’s anyone’s guess as to whether there will be a new season. Ideally it would end here with maybe an alternate ending filmed to avoid alienating fans further. On the one hand, the botched release, overwhelmingly negative response, and silence from the creators after initial interviews don’t look good for renewal chances. On the other hand, Hulu doesn’t have a lot of streaming hits, it probably did relatively decent numbers, and there are rumors floating around that its pickup chances look good. On a personal level, I hate the idea that this is where the legacy of Veronica Mars ends, while at the same time being extremely wary of what the creators have planned. I think a big part of the disappointment with S4 was that the movie and books set up what could have been some really interesting storylines and situations, all of which RT and co. squandered for cheap drama and to apparently turn the show into an entirely new vehicle; additionally I had hope that S4 would be a chance to rectify some problems the show has long had, but again, S4 exacerbated them. At this point I don’t expect anyone higher up in the creative process or at Hulu to give a fuck about the fans or making the show better as long as they hit streaming targets, but here are some suggestions:

Fire Rob Thomas

 While he created the show, it’s become clear that not only has he lost touch with the audience and the original spirit of the character, he doesn’t seem too keen on putting much effort into writing the show (as I will discuss below). Then you have his clear misogyny: his views that women in relationships can’t be interesting, that what makes Veronica interesting as a character is her trauma and how much she can endure, and the fact that basically every female character in the history of the show has a history of sexual victimization. He thought that making the Mexican cartel hitmen “philosophical” was subverting expectations (which says a lot of what his expectations of Latinx characters are). Then this is the way he essentially exploited his long term fan base to earn a new season of the show, only to turn around and tell us that we don’t matter. From a business perspective alone keeping him doesn’t make sense; selling a streaming platform on your loyal fanbase and then proceeding to purposefully piss ~80% of them off would be pretty questionable to me as someone in charge. The sheer cruelty with which he treated not only the fans who have supported him for 15 years (I fucking used to liveblog iZombie y’all. iZombie!), as well as how he callously dismissed long time cast members in favor of celebrity guest stars should not be rewarded. He’s admitted in interviews that he would be ok with younger writers doing a reboot many years in the future; why not just let him have a producer credit and then hand the show over to someone who’s invested in making it good?

Put a woman in charge and diversify the writing staff

A big problem with a) Veronica’s characterization in S4 b) RT’s ideas about what makes female characters interesting c) the show’s long history of problematic treatment of sexual assault is that it comes from a man’s conception of the female experience. The Veronica showcased in S4 and that RT wants to write in the future is very much a male fantasy: hates marriage and children, traumatized, DTF, and is too cool for other women. RT stated in interviews that he wanted to show Veronica at a “crossroads” this season in a way he claimed had been shown for men but not women; many female viewers found this depiction to ring false (few women are spending their time fretting about how committing to marriage after five years in an established relationship will bar us from strange sex going forward). In addition to having RT at the helm, most of the show’s writing staff for the majority of its run has been white dudes, which doesn’t bode well for telling the story of a female PI in a diverse community in today’s political climate. Putting a woman in charge would hopefully help rectify these issues to make the character feel more true to life and put a damper on the misogynistic storytelling. The show has a natural candidate in RT’s second-in-command Diane Ruggiero-Wright (despite her problematic history, never forget #KeisterEggGate), who has admitted to not being able to watch the last episode. Jennifer Graham, who wrote both of the books, would also be a worthy addition to the writing staff; while the books had a mixed reception, most fans agree that she got Veronica’s character right. And with the show’s problematic historical treatment of minority characters, adding more POC writers going forward is also necessary.

Bring back Logan (alive)

You don’t have to be a LoVe shipper to recognize just how integral Logan has been since the inception of the show, not just as Veronica’s partner but as a character is his own right. Logan’s journey in many ways parallels Veronica’s, and shows a contrast in how different characters respond to similar trauma. The most critical plot line in the show’s history, the mystery of who killed Lilly Kane, simply doesn’t work without Logan’s importance to Veronica. RT and his defenders like to claim that Logan was holding her back from true growth, which is frankly bizarre as he is the only character to consistently challenge her, like when he tells her that she obviously isn’t happy this season. Additionally, Logan’s scenes this season were the lone highlight of what was otherwise a painful slog of a season. Of the people who have said they would watch a potential S5, a good portion are only interested because they believe that the ambiguity of the last 10 minutes of the season means he’s not really dead (despite what RT has said in interviews). Then there’s what Logan’s death does to Veronica’s character, effectively cutting off what would have been an interesting character arc and stagnating her forever. No matter how much they try to shove Leo the pedo creep and other milquetoast RT self-insert love interests on us, no one else can possible measure up to Logan’s level in terms of being able to match Veronica as a character, intellectually or as a result of shared history.

Plus, the fact that we haven’t had a Weevil/Logan interaction since S3 is a goddamn travesty and should be rectified immediately.

Bring back Veronica

As sad as I am about Logan’s death, for me the most upsetting aspect of S4 was the assassination of Veronica’s character. For many viewers (including myself), the character we saw Kristen Bell portray in S4 wasn’t Veronica Mars but a different character with the same name. Between her abusive behavior towards Logan, her general indifference to her father’s medical condition, her dismissal of Wallace, and her racism towards Latinx characters (using a kid’s lawyer to threaten deportation: not a good look!), she was lacking the marshmallow-y center that always balanced out the pricklier aspects of her character and made her compelling. This change in characterization was especially jarring given that she was not this way when we last saw her in the books, where she mused about having children and sent her half-brother Hunter to summer camp (side note, but does he even exist anymore?). Many of us who had grown up with Veronica were hoping to see her grow with us as a character; instead we got an extreme regression lower than we’ve ever seen her. It would be one thing if they were trying to depict a PTSD storyline, which would make sense given her background, but since her change in behavior is never addressed by the narrative, it just makes her look like a cruel asshole and makes it impossible to root for her. This is exacerbated by the fact that RT has made it clear he has no interest in portraying her inner life, as shown by his wanting to avoid showing her grief over Logan’s death because it would be a real downer compared to the entertaining but ultimately hollow banter and quips he wants to focus on. Veronica this season was also just plain dumb: you mean to tell me that the girl who nearly got killed by Aaron Echolls in her back seat wouldn’t think to check her backseat every time she gets in a car?  (And let’s not even start with RT’s bizarre assertion in an interview that she apparently votes Republican). Not helping matters was Kristen Bell’s performance, which felt very flat for me this season compared to S1-3 and the movie; I don’t know if this was due to personal limitations or a reflection of the bad writing. Writers of future installments and KB herself would be wise to revisit S1, the movie, and the books to figure out what makes sense for Veronica’s character, leading me to my next point:

Get reacquainted with canon, develop a show bible, and hire a continuity director

This show has long had a problem with dropped plots, timelines, and continuity issues. Shelly Pomroy’s party has two happened either in the summer, or the fall. Then we have the movie paradox: Veronica graduated high school in 2006, which means her 10 year reunion should have taken place in 2016. The movie was released in 2014 and the books seem to keep to 2014 dates. Then S4 states that Keith’s movie accident took place in 2013, and mysteriously ages Veronica up to 35 when she should be 32 in 2019. Logan mentions an Aunt Naomi in S4--why didn’t she take care of him after Aaron was arrested (and what happened to Trina)? How the hell is Leo working as an FBI agent when he presided over the disappearance of the Lilly/Aaron tapes? Veronica is shown to be tentatively forgiving of Weevil taking the settlement from the sheriff’s department in Mr. Kiss and Tell, but is then shown to be extremely angry towards him for it in S4. This is just a small selection of the inconsistencies within the show. Plus there is the problem of repeated plot lines: Veronica rejects Leo in favor of Logan in S1, then rejects Leo in favor of Logan in Mr. Kiss and Tell, only for her to...reject Leo in favor of Logan in S4 (and RT says he wants to leave the high school plots behind). This sloppiness doesn’t bode well for a series that is supposed to be about mysteries, which require tight plotting. It would behove TPTB going forward to once and for all determine a timeline of Veronica’s life, keep a detailed record of past plot and character points, and have at least one person on staff who thinks to remember this stuff (RT notoriously has only a “solid, not spectacular” memory of the show, no matter what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says).

Make an effort (and do your fucking research) 

Moving on from continuity issues to more general problems with the laziness of RT’s writing. He has basically admitted that he doesn’t care much about facts or characterization when writing plots--he shoehorns details to fit the plot rather than have it evolve organically from the characters and prior canon. I know that when writing it’s often impossible to make every story detail 100% accurate, but the extent of RT’s sloppiness is alarming. This excellent Reddit thread details a lot of the problems with S4 in particular, but this has been a problem since S2. Did anyone ever understand exactly why the Fitzpatricks were invested in framing Logan for Felix’s death? In the movie, it makes no sense that if Cobb and co. wanted Carrie silenced, they would add the complication of framing Logan for her murder--given her history, it would have been a lot easier just to make it look like she had accidentally overdosed. Given his previous patterns of villain writing fans were able to guess the identity of the S4 bomber based on casting alone. The mysteries in both Mr. Kiss and Tell and S4 are both ripped from the headlines, which indicates that RT wants to turn VM into the next Law and Order. Meanwhile, he complained about how hard including Logan in the story in S4 was, while Logan arguably had the best lines and most interesting scenes this season--apparently when you put an effort into things, they work out! This laziness extends past storyline issues and into factual problems that detract from the quality of the plot. Longtime fandom pals are probably tired about hearing me go on and on about how there’s no way Aaron’s lawyers could have gotten Veronica’s medical records due to HIPAA laws. Logan’s career change from naval aviator to intelligence is highly unlikely (and unnecessary, given that they changed it only to fridge him at the end of the season). Meanwhile, I know fanfic writers who have spent hours on the phone with strangers in order to research what type of firearm would cause a specific type of bullet injury. It’s very puzzling to me that RT wants to take the show in the direction of being mystery-only when apart from that one time he is piss poor at writing mysteries and puts no effort into them. I shouldn’t have to tell television writers to, you know, do their job but this is what we’ve come to in 2019.

Know your audience

A majorly annoying thing about the promo for this season is how in every single interview Rob Thomas did he was always talking about how he wanted VM to be like other shows and movies: Fargo, True Detective, Game of Thrones, Chinatown (which is apparently the only noir movie he’s ever seen). The thing is, if I wanted to watch those shows, I would; I watched Veronica Mars specifically because I enjoyed its unique qualities, and I would say most fans agree. The general perception within the fandom is that with this season Rob Thomas seems to have been aiming to dump the old, majority female, CW fanbase in order to achieve what he perceives as a cooler prestigious male fanbase; the issue is, new people aren’t going to take up a show in its fourth season if they didn’t watch or didn’t like earlier seasons. Also, trying to write a prestigious show doesn’t make your show prestigious. Considering that based on anecdotal evidence most of the people who like S4 seem to be male, he may have succeeded in the first part of his aim. However, this majority female fanbase he was so willing to cast aside are the ones who have run fansites and rewatches during fallow times (i.e. between S3 and the movie and then between the books and S4), so drumming up interest among fans (and therefore streaming views) in the future may be a challenge. Plus, women are a better advertising demographic since they are more likely to be in charge of household purchasing decisions, so maintaining us as a fanbase makes business sense as well. He may have tricked enough people into watching S4 that S5 is given a go, but I wouldn’t be surprised if streams are weak beyond that. If the show is to succeed as a commercial endeavor, better to go with appealing to a known quantity than trying to make a generic show that very few people have expressed interest in watching.

Bring back the mystery of the week

This is a more minor thing I felt was missing from S4. I think after the criticism of S3 not having a season-long arc RT overcorrected in focusing on one mystery. However, the mystery of the week had the following benefits: 1) giving chances for the characters to interact and telling us more about them 2) helping to modulate the pace of the season-long arc. With better writing a season-long standalone mystery could maybe work, but in the case of S4 specifically the mystery was kind of dull and repetitive and could have stood to include a couple of diversions in the form of a smaller case here and there.

Re-evaluate the creators’ interpretation of the word “adult”

Much of the promo and reviews for this season noted the more “adult” content to be expected this season now that Veronica’s grown. Many fans hoped that meant seeing Veronica act like, you know, an adult with adult problems rather than a teenager less mature than the actual teenager she was. Unfortunately, the show’s interpretation of the word seems to be more in keeping with a television rating sense of the word--meaning sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence (But apparently not the word “fuck.”). Look, it was expected that as the show moved to a streaming service and given the overall dramatic scope that there would be an upgrade in some of this sort of content (and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t looking forward to steamier LoVe moments, which were sorely overpromised), but the way it was included this season felt like RT and co. included this stuff just because they could and not to serve the storyline. For me, personally, the biggest example of this was Veronica’s drug use, which I know didn’t necessarily bother everyone. Given her history as the daughter of an alcoholic as well as someone who had been the victim of two roofie attacks, not to mention the fact that her character never seemed to be into partying, I found it very out of character (and book writer Jennifer Graham agrees). It felt like RT included this just bc they thought it would be funny to see Veronica on drugs without considering whether it made sense for her character. Also, were the beheadings strictly necessary? Plus there’s RT’s little temper tantrum over not being able to use curse words this season--they weren’t present in the original show, no one was going to miss them now, and the “cuss” thing was just annoying and reminiscent of The Good Place. 

Dealing with a parent who maybe has dementia--that’s an adult storyline. Too bad RT ended it with a dumb excuse about “mixing meds” (another factual error! Pharmacy software would have caught it!) rather than actually exploring what it would mean for Veronica to see her father in decline and take over the family business (and give Rico Colantoni the exit he appears to want). This is the kind of adult content I would hope to see in future seasons.

Adult is not a synonym for “unrelentingly bleak” either. The original show, while dark, always had an element of hope that was completely removed from S4 (no matter what KB might claim). And would it have killed the writers to show Veronica wearing disguises and going undercover like she used to? There was nothing fun about this season (and no, I don’t count the multiple partying scenes as fun, more like sad).

Kill your darlings

It’s cliche, but it’s true. Another issue the show has long had is the writers keeping around characters or inserting jokes and references for their own personal amusement rather than for the story. The most notable example of this is the continued presence of Dick, a highly problematic character considering he pushed Beaver into the room with Veronica the night of Shelly Pomroy’s party, among a whole host of other racist, sexist, and generally obnoxious actions over the years. But because Ryan Hansen is so widely beloved among the cast and crew, so he stays. Then there’s the matter of the infamous Keister egg in 3x08, which the writers and KB have all expressed love for, despite the fact that said Keister egg is an example of sexual assault--which, even if the victim is a douchey fraternity president, is never funny. 

Also the constant Big Lebowski references are tiring. Watch a new movie.

Improve Neptune’s gender ratio

Veronica Mars, despite having a female lead, has always been a male-dominated show; other than Veronica herself, the only consistent female character over the original show was Mac (and she didn’t even come back this season). This is unacceptable in 2019, for any show. The books introduced promising female characters in the form of Marcia Langdon and Petra Landros, but Marcia’s character was was watered down for S4 and Petra was nowhere to be found. Additionally, Veronica and Mac have always been written as “cool girls” who looked down on other women for their femininity, which isn’t a great message. Almost every other female character, even the innocuous Parker, is portrayed as somehow bad or incompetent. I would love nothing more than a season centered on the women of Neptune and their interactions with each other. While we’re at it, stop giving every woman on this show a background of sexual victimization.

Treat VM as an ensemble show, not a Kristen Bell vanity project 

A major complaint from Burnt Marshmallows and S4 defenders alike was how little time was given over to the original core cast this season. While Veronica may be the protagonist, a large part of how the show became so beloved was her relationships with the other characters. Yet RT has decided that going forward VM will be a KB solo project, with her traveling town to town quipping and sleeping with strangers. This seems strange, given Kristen’s recent interviews talking about how difficult it is to shoot VM and how she never wants to be first on a call sheet ever again, not to mention how she asked for less screen time all the way back in S2, which resulted in the Weevil-Logan storyline, which was way more interesting than Veronica’s storylines during the first half of that season. (The traveling detective thing also seems weird considering that KB is pretty insistent on shooting in LA to be near her family.) Additionally, if this is truly the last season of VM with all the original characters, then no one got a proper sendoff. 

I’m not sure how willing much of the cast will be to return for future iterations, given how uncomfortable many of them seemed during promo as well RT and KB’s treatment of them (insensitive at best, deliberately mean at worst) this season (shout out to Tina Majorino for recognizing what a shit show this was going to be), but bringing back all the original characters into the fold and giving them significant storylines would go a long way to mending fences with fans, improving the show from a character arc perspective, and would also give KB the break she apparently wants. 

Recourt the fanbase

What has VM always been renowned for above all else? It’s incredibly loyal fandom which not only got it renewed twice during its original run but also put up their own money to get the movie made--I know many people who donated when they really couldn’t afford to. RT basically owes the last 6 years of his career to VM fans--the success of the Kickstarter arguably got him the iZombie show running gig, and the fourth season likely wouldn’t have even happened if not for it. Thus, the blatant cruelty and disregard with which RT and KB have treated fans during the promotion of S4 has been incredibly insulting and hurtful; I still can’t fathom what in the world possessed RT to think that throwing away this 15-year relationship was a good idea. It’s not a good sign when the 2 fansites most active during the post-movie period (VMHQ and VM Confessions) cease operations in the wake of S4, and when at least 3 out of 8 board members of the oldest running fan group, Neptune Rising (who were dormant during the post-movie period but played a critical role during earlier fan campaigns and in the S4 promo) resign. A fandom this loyal that was betrayed will not stand idly by if the S5 RT wants to make goes ahead; given the number of tweets the official Hulu VM account has had to delete in the wake of S4 due to the overwhelmingly negative response as well as the controversy over editing out Logan from S4 promos, I imagine that S5 will be a PR nightmare. Even if future seasons are amazing the trust can probably never be fully repaired, but it would be helpful for RT (or fingers crossed, a new show runner) and KB (as star and EP) to go overboard in reaching out to fans and at least admitting they made a misstep with the entirety of S4. Back in the day, the old Mars Investigation fansite was invited to set to conduct interviews; maybe do that again. Also someone should get KB some sort of VM fandom-fluent media trainer because I don’t think she has conducted a single interview during her entire stint on the show that didn’t anger fans (it might help if she actually bothered to watch the show).

Map out an endgame

Look, this can’t go on forever. As long as RT keeps leaving every installment open ended with the hopes of maybe getting renewed again five years down the line, the story is going to keep running into the issues the movie and S4 faced with having to shoehorn the characters into nonsensical plot lines to reconcile those endings and deal with actor availability issues. Either plot another 2-3 seasons to wrap the show up with a satisfying conclusion, or map out a greater timeline of Veronica’s life with spots where a mini series or movie here and there could fit in.

[evie26blog]

Inspirational Artist Links: Performance Art Responses

Electric Stimulus to Face, by Daito Manabe

Manabe’s electric stimulus to the face experiment was really interesting to me. I think that this video demonstrates that although we are all unique, we are all biologically the same. Yes, we vary genetically with different conditions and so on, but our bodies function the same way. Four different people had the electrodes placed in the same spots and each one of their nerves reacted the same way to the stimuli. This point was made even more clear by the way that he synced all four videos perfectly with each other. You can watch all four people have the exact same response to the same stimuli at the same time.

Alter Bahnhof, by Janet Cardiff

When I read this description of this video it got me really excited. It was more anticlimactic than I was expecting and I think that it would be more impactful to experience firsthand. For me, the slow movement through the station failed to grab my interest and I continuously found myself getting distracted. I do believe that the concept is fascinating and I wish that I had the opportunity to experience this piece the way that it was intended to be experienced.

Bike Lanes, by Casey Neistat

I must admit that the first time Neistat ran into the construction equipment I laughed harder than I should have. It wasn’t funny to me because he was possibly injured but because I knew what he was trying to say. If he was going to get a ticket for biking outside of the designated lane when it was unsafe to do so, then he was going to plow through obstacles that were placed in those lanes. His witty, sarcastic response to an unfair ticket was pure gold in my opinion.

Legend & Queen, by Candace Breitz

What really stood out to me about these videos was the different ways that people reacted to the music. You could tell when someone was truly moved by the lyrics and when others couldn’t think of the words but still moved with the rhythm. These videos showed that music affects us all differently while bringing us together at the same time. I especially liked the way that Breitz laid out the videos. By filming thirty people’s individual reactions to the same song and then displaying them all together, the viewer is more inclined to move their focus from the entire group to then each individual over the course of an hour.

Meat Joy, by Carolee Schneemann

This video did not resonate with me at all. I understand that Schneemann’s purpose behind this piece was to fight the social norm at the time but I had a hard time identifying what those norms were. This video is more than twice as old as I am and I think that the older it gets; the more meaning is lost on younger generations. I do think that it would be interesting to watch the video with someone that lived in Paris during that time to see what their reaction would be and maybe gain some insight.

Vanessa Beecroft Interview & VB40, by Vanessa Beecroft

Beecroft’s use of the female figure as an art form is inspiring. She uses a controlled environment to display these women in a way that forces to viewer to appreciate their form. The models aren’t allowed to speak or act in any way and they can only move once tired. Each position of the body is considered art, which I think is beautiful. Beecroft uses mostly nude models to evoke a sense of discomfort in the audience; she wants them to feel unsure of how to approach her work. VB40 resonated with me because it shows these women that are all nude except for red tights and heels. To me, the nude part represented vulnerability but the bold color of the tights and the heels said power. I think that Beecroft was trying to demonstrate a woman’s ability to be both vulnerable and powerful at the same time.

The Astonished, by Bill Viola

This video resonated with me in the sense that it shows that not everyone experiences sadness and grief in the same way. Working as a CVT and helping with euthanasia almost daily, I constantly have to remind myself that everyone goes through these emotions differently. This concept has made me a more understanding person and has helped me to not jump to judgement so easily. I think that this may be the message that Viola is trying to get through to the viewers. Grief and sadness are experienced differently by everyone and there is beauty in that.

Staging, by Maria Hassabi

What resonated with me the most about this video is Hassabi’s use of space and movement. The slow movement of the performers allows the viewer to take in every detail of the body’s movements and how the environment effects the overall piece. In the video, she said that viewers reported feeling either a sense of meditation or tension. I think that for Hassabi, she gets a profound feeling of connection to her surroundings and the people performing with her. While I do appreciate her message behind the performances, I feel that I would be a viewer that experienced tension. Something about watching someone slowly move along on the floor as if no one were around would be unsettling to me.

Talking Tongues, by Lisa Steele

This video was very interesting to watch. I found the subject matter compelling and loved how Steele herself played the role. Domestic abuse is an extremely important issue and Steele’s video brings awareness to the fact that most people don’t want to deal with it. She portrays a woman that has tried multiple times to escape her abusive husband and no matter how many times she reaches out for help, she is always sent back to him. I find this video as a plea to listen to those that come forward and ask for help in these situations because not all of them will be able to share their stories as a survivor as Steele did.

Perimeter of Square, by Bruce Nauman

This video failed to resonate with me. As I watched it, I was having a hard time deciphering what Nauman was trying to get across to the viewer. I actually ended up looking the video up in order to get some insight. Nauman was demonstrating many themes but the ones that I noticed the most were repetition, body awareness and minimalism. He synced his body movements to the tempo of a metronome, which requires awareness of one’s body. I definitely think that Nauman accomplished what he wanted to in this video but it simply failed to pique my interest.

Punk Prayer, by Pussy Riot

The message behind this video resonated with me more than the delivery. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in the conditions that these women described in their song. In this sense, I do believe that it is important to shed light on these issues and to try and make a difference. What did not resonate with me is the fact that they did this within a church. I’m not a very religious person and no longer practice but I was brought up in the Catholic church and still hold a great deal of respect for religion. I found their performance disrespectful but I suspect that the group intended to upset people by choosing a church as their setting.  

Cut Piece, by Yoko Ono

What resonated the most with me about this video was when the woman speaking throughout the video said that either way, whether or not anyone had cut the dress, it would have said something. The message would have been different if no one actually came up and cut Ono’s dress. As time went on, people started to get more comfortable with the idea of cutting pieces of her dress away and therefore people started taking larger pieces off. To me, this is an example of mankind’s herd like tendencies; one person may do something that is considered taboo but when more people follow suit, it becomes an accepted behavior.

Interior Scroll, Carolee Schneemann

This piece was intriguing to me because of Schneemann’s use of the female body. It evokes a sense of great respect for the female body as a place of creation. The photographs that show Schneemann painting herself with mud depict a oneness with nature and recognition that life comes from women. In the photographs where Schneemann is seen slowly pulling a scroll from her vagina, I believe that she is trying to say that women hold a great amount within themselves. There are so many traits that make up a woman: wisdom, strength, empathy, etc. Life on Earth would not exist without us and that is why this series of photos resonated with me.

Bound Mouth & Foot, by Kate Wingard

I really liked Wingard’s message behind this piece. I think that the use of terms that would be hurtful to a person brings awareness to the mental and emotional damage we can do to one another. I especially appreciated the way that she completely removed the word “shame” by literally stomping on it until it was unrecognizable. For me this was a message to squash the negativity that others throw at you and never let it take hold.

Wholesome, by Megan Carnrite

I found this video really interesting. What resonated with me was the idea that life will continuously throw things at us and we handle them the best we can. Whether we successfully handle a situation (swallowing) or if it becomes too much and we let things slide (food falling from Carnrite’s mouth), we are all expected to keep up the appearance that nothing ever phased us. I think that this was a beautiful metaphor for the everyday struggles of life.

Roll of a Woman, by Javid Rezvani

I found this video extremely funny. The viewer’s first reaction is that the woman is talking about sex and they continue this narrative throughout the video; even after the true topic, the fact that women do indeed poop, is revealed. I found that this witty approach could be used for so many aspects of our lives. There are so many different facets of our lives that we may know occur as humans but we never think about it happening in someone else’s life. It’s as if the artist is saying, “hey, we are all more alike than we think. Stop thinking we aren’t”.

How to Earn a Glass of Water, by Dallas Scott

I think that this video showed a great deal of human restraint. Scott demonstrated an amazing amount of willpower to be able to sit under lamps that were probably hot for just under three and a half hours, waiting for a glass of water to melt. Other species would not have demonstrated such restraint and would have left in search of an easier source of water. While I found the video a great example of a human’s will, it did fail to resonate with me on an inspirational level.

Can Knot, by Alexandra Gutierrez

I think that the message that Gutierrez is trying to portray is how we deal with life’s struggles. In most cases, they are not clearly defined as a single issue but rather are intertwined. As we struggle to pull them apart, we may attempt to put the others to the side in order to focus on one issue. This may work for awhile but eventually we’ll pull on something that pulls everything else to the surface and we are met with another knotted mess of problems. This video resonated with me because it resembled how I have dealt with issues in my past and I think that many people have experienced this as well.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

You're so right about the Will Roland fanart problems. It seems like back when Will Roland was only known for Jared people were way more proWill because he could be their funny meme boi who ate bathbombs but now that he's a lead with all these emotional songs it's like God forbid he's not their "twink bby". Idk it annoys me so much especially when people draw the rest of the Broadway cast and still use WillC or do an animatic with WillRs voice and WillCs character ugh like. Accept the Roland pls

lmao we are all just out here grabbing the mic like “attention all bastards: Look, just because will roland isn’t your ideal fancast for most adorable twink of the year - “

really like, i have never come across any signs of there having been any pattern in the deh fandom of ~taking issue~ with will’s Abilities to sing or play the part of a struggling teen or whatever like what crops up re: him being the lead in bmc.....it also is unsurprising yet disappointing that like, jared and alana are so easily completely ignored, but when they Are acknowledged it’s super flattened interpretations like, either they’re both hypocritical jerks (just based on evan’s gfy accusations basically lol) or if they’re actually viewed in a positive way it’s just like, alana is your friendly local Model Student and jared is memes and neither of them are in the way! :3

you litrally cannot ignore jeremy the Whole Entire Main Character tho and also like. can’t ignore the fact that caring about jeremy as a Romantique Lead is ahhh important to many ppl in the fanbase? so him being regarded as ~less cute~ is more of an Issue b/c the character must be taken seriously and is the sympathetic hero and has a lot more solo material / more of Any material / more focus than jared does in deh.........you Have To Look At Him and care about his actual feelings and not just misinterpret the character as “has no serious emotions b/c he doesn’t say serious things in a serious tone” the way ppl misinterpret jared. there’s the assumption that someone who is good / sympathetic should also be attractive / cute / Personally Appealing To Look At and that wasn’t as much a conflict when ppl didn’t think it was important to sympathize / care about / pay attention to jared too much, and the “conflict” of caring abt jeremy’s capacity for a romantic relationship but that’s less important if he’s not as Cute also not being as much an issue when most people don’t care about jared’s romantic feelings or think that they exist despite jared being in love with evan But Anyways

like it is wild the things people will just make up to “justify” their Dislike for will, which has only manifested as apparent Issues thanks to him playing jeremy rather than jared........there’s the classic “mm idk i don’t think he can sing that well” approach which like. some people are just trying to say they do not like the inherent descriptive qualities of his voice, which is more nasal obviously and don’t anyone come in here with the “Actually the Technical definition of Nasal re Vocals is” b/c we know what i mean, alright? nasal voices are not considered ~serious~ and there’s the kneejerk dumb-annoying-loser-nerd association. god knows that jeremy heere canNot have characteristics that could be automatically judged as irritating and unappealing. then there’s the notion that He doesn’t have the (vocal) range!! which like. do you honestly think they would cast someone who doesn’t have the correct range. you’re aware that will roland was being considered for the part of jeremy in the two river run up to the last round of callbacks. you know that the song that was literally written expressly to suit will roland’s individual voice and singing abilities makes use of his falsetto which people go “omg he can’t hit those high notes” except sometimes when they misattribute his falsetto to other singers they suddenly find it worth complimenting. and then you get people who like, want to subscribe to this softened version of it and get all backhanded like “oh i think will’s vocals are improving whew that’s good” in any random video and always Only single him out apparently like. did you think he gets worse with experience? you don’t wanna talk about any of these other professional singers improving or worsening or anything? only wanna give ur assessment of william’s huh

honestly i for real haven’t seen the 1.0 version b/c i’m here via will roland in the first place & i’ve never gotten the impression that there’s some Essential Content i’m missing out on by having only seen 2.0........but between a) people complaining that will r’s jeremy is Too Frustrated He Shouldn’t Be That Angry It Makes Him Less Sympathetic and b) saying just as a point of comparison betwixt the depictions that will r’s jeremy is more frustrated and c) i haven’t read That much bmc fic but people sure talk about jeremy being like five seconds away from bursting into tears at any given moment which like, okay yeah aren’t we all, but also i presume this stems from will c’s apparently Sadder portrayal of jeremy. i almost forgot where i was going with this one but i think it’s just that yeah people truly take issue with will r’s jeremy being more frustrated and it’s like you realize there’s no Right or Wrong portrayal / interpretation even if you prefer one for whatever reasons......theatre just is Like that.......you have a slightly different portrayal during ever performance even from the same actors, and you’ll often have different actors playing the role........yeah people usually are attached to the first performance they see / have that as their Standard and that’s fine, it’s just like, you don’t have to decide that’s an Objective view and that you have Objective issues with everyone else’s take. 1.0 is still there for you

uhhhh oh yeah and the whole Clout idea lmao......people really putting themselves out there shaking their heads at the supposed fact that will was cast for the off bway run to Boost Popularity b/c he was part of the deh obc......besides the whole thing that it’s hardly likely that would’ve been considered necessary anyhow, there’s the little thing that a) again, will roland had already been very seriously considered for the part even before will connolly was decided on for the original run and b) like.....these people had been collaborating for eons and you really think will roland only popped into their minds thanks to being in deh....and c) joe iconis has repeatedly said they specifically did Not want to cast people based on who was Known enough and whose names would be good for marketing and d) maybe anyone has noticed that the marketing never involved any mention of anyone in the cast? no? cool. and yet people like so truly think they’re Wise to ~real reason~ that they’d go and cast will roland as the lead. like people are making shit up and really just thinking it’s true b/c they Want it to be true b/c they Want to be validated in having actual contempt for will’s casting despite the “issue” being that he doesn’t seem as Likeable (worthy of sympathy...cough...) thanks to his deemed-unattractive looks and sweetly-adenoidal voice and more-frustrated portrayal all seeming less cute or whatever

and i mean i haven’t seen it crop up of late but the one particular Grasping At Straws ~justification~ for will being unworthy of the part thanks to perceived acting/singing incompetence which is soooo wild is when people are like “ough i Hate when he just holds his arms out when he sings” like fmslkdj if anything that’s just an individual quirk and the fact that it was something you noticed means you just latched on to it as potential fodder for “the fact i registered this information abt someone whose existence i Resent means it distracted me which means i hate it and it’s bad”...like another thing he does with his hands while singing is when he makes the loose claws and kind of half crosses his arms in front of his chest! where are the complaints about that?? nowhere, b/c people have not really processed it as a particular thing, so they can’t deem it a Particular Thing To Criticize. people sometimes Notice that his jared talks with his hands a lot, which will says is an acting choice that came from an unconscious tendency, but people really only bring it up to juxtapose will’s jared’s dramatic tendencies and nervous habits with sky’s jared’s more outwardly still and smoothed-over behavior. aka they don’t Complain about it or deem it a weakness / bad thing. and yet people caring about bmc are really jumping on that chance to be like oh ugh there he goes again, having a characteristic i associate with him as an individual, disgusting, can’t believe will connolly was murdered for this..

it’s a bit clearer too with bmc moreso than deh that people aren’t super willing to accept how will roland Looks b/c like, thanks to will connolly’s jeremy having the long hair thing you can Tell The Difference In Which Actor Is Represented when ppl draw the character even if the rest of the features are kind of “generic” (and how even the costuming isn’t a dead giveaway since ppl will draw connolly jeremy in 2.0/3.0′s outfits) and it even serves to specify the actor in writing format too if they mention the hair lol........and honestly?? this fact is one of the most damning things lol in that people the reason so many ppl continue to produce connolly-based jeremys is Not because for whatever reason they can’t / it’s too difficult to draw a will roland lookin jeremy......like a lot of the time The trait which serves to distinguish between the two is the hair thing. people are adopting jeremy’s new costuming and stuff but choosing to make sure we know that jeremy does not Look like will roland and the clearest indicator of this is the longer hair thing......which also means that for many people the main effort they’d need to exert to make it clear they’re drawing wrol jeremy would just be to....shorten the hair. And Yet!!!! it is apparently beyond people to do this

like uh nice on making a lgw animatic but really.........really we’re gonna take the song that is specifically from the 2.0 / 3.0 runs, so it’s obvious we’re Accepting that non-1.0 content, okay......and we’re Accepting will roland’s vocals, which, a person’s voice is a physical trait of theirs too, same as The Existence Of Their Body........and yet jeremy Cannot Look Like How Will Roland Looks, that’s too far, can’t do that. we can take material from the specific versions the actor was cast in, that material being a song written specifically for this individual actor’s voice, in the form of this actor’s actual vocals......but can’t have the depicted image of jeremy be based on this actor’s appearance..............of all the......

really all that it is is that more people find will connolly more attractive than will roland and this makes them feel like will roland Is Worse and then the people who just run with that either just embrace that and are crashing around on public forums saying Lol i hate him cuz he’s ugly lmao....and then you have people who don’t wanna do that but don’t wanna actually examine why they ~take issue~ with will being cast and so they’ve gotta leap on any Other things about him that feel more acceptable / Objective like oh the portrayal is “Wrong” (that’s not how this works) or he can’t sing well enough (yeah he can) or high enough (yeah he can) or he was stunt cast (no he wasn’t) or they wanna label every characteristic / trait they can think up that Isn’t his physical appearance as Annoying And Bad like. maybe stop and ask why you find it SO pressing that this other actor has the part and it Must be objectively inferior if not ruinous for reasons you gotta invent about him being incompetent cuz it’s better to make stuff up about how a professional actor isn’t good enough for a part than to say you don’t think he’s cute enough and are bothered by that

it didn’t matter as much to people when they viewed his character as either Just A Joke or Just A Jerk or flat-out disposable material. being attractive is for serious sympathetic beloved characters, natch

unfortunately jeremy can’t be written off as The Unimportant Meme Friend With No Real Feelings so now there’s a whole problem if an actor is not as cute

like b/c of the way he looks ppl can accept that a character played by will roland can be funny or can be rude or can really not be too important to take seriously / consider complex or sympathetic or likeable beyond being a walking Running Joke, but when it comes to a sympathetic main character whose emotional state is so important it’s practically assigned a character and who’s a romantic lead? now people have a problem with him looking the way will roland does

[magaprima]

The introduction of Adam 2.0 has many effects, including narrative, but one of the things I loved the most was how it really opened the gates for showing us Lilith’s story, why she is the way she is, what her experiences are and, what I believe, is used as a metaphor for female victims of male and domestic abuse. 

This essay got hella long as it covers Adam 2.0, theories about First Adam, Lucifer’s abuse, Lilith’s story as victim, and one who encourages the abuse cycle as well as breaking it, how male abuse influence her and Sabrina’s relationship, the development of her relationship with Sabrina in general, freedom and self-worth....it covers a lot of stuff. 

I wish to note in advance that my analysis is here based on my qualifications in film studies, writing for performance, cinematography, my mother’s study into domestic violence and women in the home, as well as my own negative experiences at the hands of men, and therefore is still only an opinion/observation. I like analysing stuff, I enjoy it, but always remember it’s fiction, it’s TV, and therefore intended for fun, so please remember opinions can be shared or ignored, enjoyed or blanked. 

Firstly, we establish from her very visceral reaction to the mere mention of the name ‘Adam’ how much of a shitstorm her experience with the First Adam was. We’ve all had that person, be they male or female, who have had such a negative impact on our lives that even the name alone is enough to dredge it all up in our memories. For Lilith it’s so extreme, and also because she’s Lilith, she attempts to kill him from an armchair within hours of meeting him. 

Also, when she enters the cottage and Adam is there she immediately suggests a backrub, she expects that a man in a relationship with a woman expects the woman to serve him, to worship him. And then, later, Adam makes a comment on her appearance;  

Adam: You look so different Lilith: You don’t approve

When Adam comments that she looks different, Lilith immediately jumps to the conclusion that it’s a judgement, that he will disapprove. We can presume this is how First Adam was, how he told her to how to be, also the False God, and also Lucifer. These are three main male roles in Lilith’s existence and they have all tried to control her in one way or another, so much so that she expects it from Adam 2.0 as well.  

She also immediately presumes she will be judged, and he will disapprove, when he catches her about to spike the punch (admittedly she’s poisoning the punch, but he thinks it’s only alcohol). “Don’t judge me” she immediately says, a knee jerk reaction with how quickly she says it. She has only been with Adam 2.0 one day and yet she is already regressing to how she was in the beginning with the First Adam, and, we can presume, given what we’ve seen of their interactions, even with Lucifer. The fact she is regressing to these knee jerk reactions of presuming judgement, is really revealing of Lilith’s experiences.

Similarly, when he declares he has a gift for her, she’s already internally expecting something generic and what men typically give women-- more flowers like earlier perhaps, or chocolates or jewellery. Yet, she is genuinely surprised to find it’s not something generic at all, but something he’s bought specifically because he knows Mary will love it (and coincidentally so does Lilith. He inadvertently buys something Lilith adores. Which begs the question why Wardwell and Lilith have the same tastes). The fact Lilith is so surprised and delighted by this suggests no man has actually ever considered her so personally before, not even Lucifer. 

When Lilith declares she doesn’t ever want to get married and Adam 2.0 suddenly jumps up and marches over to her side of the table, she looks at him wide-eyed, there’s no anger, no defence, just surprise and also the markers of fear, however mild, as if she is expecting an angry protest or even a violent outburst. This is the marker of a woman who is scarred by her past, an abusive past. It can be implied here, I believe, especially considering her reaction to the Adam name earlier, that it isn’t just that she refused to submit to the First Adam, but that his reply, his refusal was a violent one, but primarily it’s that the Dark Lord’s replies to any arguments are always violent ones. She is not able to refuse him, and if she tries, she is punished. Hence, out of habit, she expects a violent reply to her refusal here too. 

She also avoids Adam’s eye when he says “I promise I’ll never hurt you”. Avoiding eye contact, the down slump of the shoulders, the way her hands remain out of the way, chin down, are all typical body language markers of a survivor of abuse, of someone who has learned to behave a certain way in order to minimise punishment/injury. And if we consider how much Lucifer abuses and manipulates her, in the mere scenes we see alone, to the point that she has been convinced all this time that she has free agency (and that she was simply working for a promotion basically) when she didn’t. 

“He was cruel to me, Adam; he was only ever cruel”

Again, this could be taken to mean First Adam or Satan, or it could mean both, that the only men in her life were both only ever cruel, but we know for certain, with Lucifer, that it has been cruel and it has been constant. Regardless, the way she leans into Adam 2.0′s touch is for comfort and reassurance-- she might be playing the game, doing what’s expected, but the way she rests against his hand does seem genuine, and this is supported by how, in the very next moment we see the first genuine kiss between the two of them. Previous kisses are all Adam, Lilith has her eyes open, surprised, and doesn’t return the kiss, but in this moment she kisses back, her eyes are closed, she’s enjoying it, giving back. It’s immediately followed by the forehead touch, looking at him, which is all very emotionally intimate. This is the very first instance of Lilith experiencing something non-abusive from a male. 

Later, we see  her leaving the bedroom, calling out ‘I’ll be right back, my love’, as she leaves Adam in bed. It’s very calm and post-coital, there is even an element of romance in the air. She’s casual, content, walking slowly, enjoying herself, pouring herself a drink, temporarily without a care in the world. We have never seen Lilith like this before. 

And then suddenly, Satan arrives, and Lilith drops the jug on the floor, smashing it, as she is so shocked and panicked by his sudden appearance, he breaks right through her calm and we see her tense again, on edge again. This is typical of someone caught by an abuser: she’s wide eyed, not blinking, heavy breathing with panic and fear, she whispers his name with that same shock and fear. These are all the very classic reactions of an abuse victim caught ‘in the act’ of something forbidden by an abuser. In a normal mundane environment, this would be her caught talking to someone or being out of the house too late, but regardless of the supernatural elements, it’s still the signs of an abuse victim.

Satan then says:

“Get rid of him, Lilith, you belong to me and only me”

This is very typical abuser language; you’re mine, you’re my property, you’re not allowed to be with anyone else, talk to anyone else, without my permission because you’re mine. The controlling language of this is obvious and immense and it’s paired with Lilith’s response. Her expression is not just wary of his wrath, but also resigned. She’s remembering what her life actually is. That’s it’s not the pleasant little house-play she had moments ago, where she was promised she would never be hurt, she is the Dark Lord’s Handmaiden, she’s his to do with as he pleases. This is in direct contrast to Adam 2.0 saying how he didn’t care whether they were married or not, just so long as they were together. She is, ironically, free with the mortal, but a prisoner with her Dark Lord, the one who was meant to free her. 

Now we see, shortly after, that despite realising how trapped she is, she chooses to defy him and protect Adam 2.0. She disguises it as ‘I won’t get to play with him’, but there’s something much deeper here; it’s as clear to the viewer as it is to her familiar. And it’s proven in how desperately and urgently she tells Adam to put the enchanted ring on and never take it off. This is the action of someone determined not to lose the one thing that is making her remember herself, the self that defied the False God, defied the First Man and became the First Witch. Someone who wanted freedom, to be equal. 

And the whole scene plays out like a real, genuine proposal. If you were shown the scene without any context of the characters, the setting etc you would simply see a ring being slipped on a finger and a man picking up a woman, the woman laughing (she actually laughs, genuinely laughs happily when he picks her up)...they look like a genuinely happy couple getting engaged. This is essentially a metaphor for a woman escaping her abuse cycle. We see it in life, and in dramas depicting life, as usually the woman running to family or friends, leaving the home and finally daring to try and make new links, new ties, beyond the abuser’s circle. For Lilith, it’s Adam 2.0. 

As she looks at him in that proposal scene, the way she bites her lip, looking up at him with...well, love, it’s incredibly sad, especially when you know it won’t last, because here we get a glimpse of who Lilith was before, when she was first created. Before she was abused and controlled and manipulated and any other number of things at the hands of the False God, First Adam and the Dark Lord. Just like long-term abuse victims lose who they were, lose themselves in the abuse, so Lilith has lost herself (We do see hints of her original self in the way she helps students at Baxter High, though it serves no true purpose beyond just simply helping them, we see it in the way she does become genuine with Sabrina upon occasion etc but this is the first time we start to see glimpses of it properly). 

Experiences at the hands of men, no matter who those men are in relation to you, can change you, depending on the experience. It can warp you, it can make you feel less than yourself, trapped, injured, disgusted, especially if it’s been constant as it has been for Lilith. And these feelings stay with you, they never go away. And they can make you hate all men and want nothing more to do with them, even if you love the idea of them, or even the concept of that perfect relationship, it’s prevented by how your opinions are now effected by your experiences. And I think we can safely say this is the case with Lilith when her origin story includes saying she is equal to Adam, she doesn’t ask to leave him, she doesn’t say she doesn’t want to be with him, she says she doesn’t want to be less than him. So we can presume Lilith would have been happy with a romance if it had been a partnership not a domineering dynamic.

Lilith is a female icon, and her dialogue and actions in this show often add to that, alongside many other reasons within the CAOS mythology as well as as Dianic, Witchcraft and revised Jewish mythology. But her story, particularly within the context and established mythology and narrative of the show (which does choose to take different pieces from all mainstream and modern religions and combine them) is also one that shows her as representative of female victims of abuse at the hands of men: what it can do to us, how it can make us unrecognisable to ourselves. As I said in my previous post, Adam 2.0 didn’t have to be a man for this new dynamic, it’s not about a man rescuing Lilith from abuse and making her happy, it’s about a person doing that, a person showing her there’s something else, another life. It’s simply poetic narrative to have it be a man named Adam. 

We continue to see her happy and content when she’s strolling through the woods with Adam 2.0, she’s the most relaxed we’ve seen her be with anyone (she’s certainly not relaxed in any of her scenes with Satan. I mean remember her first scene in part 1? Where she was begging forgiveness and kissing his feet? The first blatant clue that this was not a good relationship, and there was definite control and abuse in the dynamic) , she genuinely laughs at his suggestion about Tibet and then looks genuinely awkward when she realises he’s serious. She is falling into this relationship, and though I know other viewers will disagree, but for me personally, you are seeing someone falling in love. Even if she doesn’t quite identify it yet herself (she only says love once he’s dead, unfortunately). 

She has this gentle surprise when Adam 2.0 says he wants to show her the world. She’s freaking ancient, she’s literally been around forever, she has seen the world and everything in it, but Adam 2.0 wants to show her a world where she’s free, where it’s just the two of them, no arrangements, no deals, no promises, just two people, travelling together, equals. And she knows this. This is the moment where suddenly she’s awake. Adam 2.0 is making her realise that Lucifer has been as much a prison as First Adam and the False God were, and here is a chance to run away from all that, to finally have no prison at all.

 And so she says with genuine feeling ‘I will consider it’. This is very much the part where, in a normal drama about an abuse victim, the writers would typically having her finding a romantic connection and the partner begging them to run away with them, the victim trying to get up the courage. Narratively and cinematically we do start to see full on, direct parallels here. Especially when he tells her to make a wish, and she genuinely does so before throwing the pebble, smile on her face, then laughing with his arm around her. The way she looks at him when he’s not looking (which is something you do do when you’re in love), genuinely considering him, sort of bewildered for this is literally the first time ever that she has felt this way, with the person she’s with not demanding anything of her. He has asked her to go to Tibet, he hasn’t demanded, and he’s asked because he wants her to be with him, not because he needs her to do something. 

This all very much the set-up trope we see in those very serious TV dramas, where we see the victim planning to be free of her captor and abuser and we, the audience, feel so worried it will never happen. 

And just like the TV drama tropes, we have the scene where it all goes wrong. We see Lilith eating a meal with ‘Adam’, she’s relaxed, she’s enjoying herself, she believes she’s free, she’s found a path to choose for herself, something to do for herself. When she replies to ‘Adam’ suggesting she’s going to say yes to Tibet, she speaks firmly, confidently. ‘Yes I am’ is saying goodbye to her chains, it’s saying ‘Yes I am leaving my abuser’, ‘Yes, I am leaving and doing something for me’. 

But the way she looks at the ring when she pulls it out of her mouth, the confusion, the bewilderment, she was so certain of her escape, of her plans, that what the ring signifies hasn’t clicked yet, there’s a small delay as denial argues with facts. The entire cinematography of this scene really does remind me of basic murder dramas, when the person comes home and doesn’t yet realise that their loved one has been murdered, or when we see the person being happy and carefree and they haven’t yet realised it’s all about to be ruined by what’s behind the door. 

“Did you really think you could deceive me, Lilith? Our bond is eternal. Our bond is unbreakable. There is no escape to Tibet or anywhere else”

This could not be more obvious abuser language if it tried. It’s threatening, it’s possessive and it’s reminding the victim that there’s no escape, emphasising the idea of an unbreakable bond. Like, ‘did you really think you could just leave me?’ and we see the utter horror in her eyes at this, at the ring, at Adam 2.0′s head, at Satan’s words, all of it. She is utterly horrified in a way we’ve never seen before. She’s incredibly human in this moment. 

We see this type of scene in a lot of films and dramas where an abused wife believes she is finally getting away from the husband, but then he’s there, blocking the doorway, having discovered her plan, and she has no idea if he’s going to kill her for it. The way Lilith silently cries at the sight of Adam’s severed head, the way every time she looks at it she gasps for air, her shoulders heave, this is all very much a parallel to when the abused character in dramas realises all their plans were false hope and that they’re never getting away. Sometimes even in those non supernatural dramas, the lover, the friend, is still killed by the abuser just as Adam 2.0 was, in order to teach the wife/girlfriend a lesson. 

“Now clean your plate of the mortal,” only adds to this parallel, as it is so much like when you see, on screen, the abuser character beat the victim’s character senseless, before adding ‘now clean this mess up’ as if it is all her fault (Think of the way Bill Sykes behaves with Nancy in Oliver, until he does eventually beat her to death) and her whole expression is exactly what would you would expect. She looks trapped, scared, horrified; she is so broken by this she almost cries at the table. 

And even though we know she eats male flesh, we’ve seen her picking her teeth clean with delight, here we see her vomit it all back up, every piece of Adam 2.0 is expelled. This is partly to show us how the taste of Adam 2.0 is vile to her, because it’s not what she wanted (and supporting hints from Part 1 that it isn’t just any man that she eats. If she wants a real meal, it has to be the right choice, like the misogynist nightmare of a principal) and because of how she felt about him. But it’s also what we tend to see in dramas in post-abuse scenes; crying over the toilet basin, vomiting, before crumpling onto the floor. Out of context, she looks simply like the trapped abuse victim, the abused wife who has suffered this for so long she doesn’t remember it being any other way. Yet, she recently had hope for it all changing, but that hope is gone now, taken away by her abuser, and now she’s more trapped than ever and it makes it so much worse than before, because before she lived in ignorance and now she’s awake, but still trapped. 

A lot of abuse victims don’t acknowledge they’re abused because that’s worse, admitting it makes it more painful and more unavoidable (things are easier to live with if you don’t think it’s true). It’s especially true in Lilith’s case, because it would be admitting that she left one abuser for another. And when we consider a following scene with Sabrina in a later episode: 

Lilith: Promises were made Sabrina: And you believed him? Lilith: You don’t understand. He was kind at first. Gentle. We’d spend our days near the place where he’d fallen and hit the earth. The more time passed since the fall, the more he turned into this thing of darkness

This dialogue is so typical abuse victim dialogue. The ‘he wasn’t like this before’ is extremely typical as reasoning for his behaviour and the reason why they stay. No abuser starts off the abuser, they start off kind at first, engaging, drawing the victim in and by Lilith’s own words we see this is exactly what Lucifer did too. And so we see Lilith has lived in wilful ignorance of his behaviour, remembering how he was before, focusing on their promises, their lovemaking, how the relationship was in the beginning, as many abuse victims do, in order to remind herself why she stays and to convince herself she doesn’t want to leave. But now, with Adam 2.0 and Satan’s murder of him, and the way he made her eat his flesh afterwards, has forced her to wake up and admit the abuse, admit that he is no longer the same person at all. 

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand. How did the Dark Lord discover us?”

This is another abuse victim signature; questioning yourself, trying to figure out what precisely went wrong, to find the rhyme in the reason, an excuse for why it happened, why the escape didn’t work. This reasoning and questioning is so desperate and internal, because if a reason is discovered, an excuse, then it means that it’s not that she can’t ever escape, it’s that this time she did something wrong and was caught. An excuse means hope isn’t entirely extinguished. 

Yet, when she finds out the ‘thing that went wrong’ was Stolis, that her own familiar had been the one to tell Lucifer about her and Adam 2.0, is a direct metaphor for an abuse victim discovering that their friends are, in fact, the abuser’s friends rather than their own, the discovery that she has no supporters around her, that her social circle is a false circle. It is confined to simply Stolis with Lilith, but he is, admittedly, the only one in her intimate circle. 

But abusers do this: they surround the victim with people they believe are friends, people that they will share things with and talk to, treat as a confidante, when in reality, these ‘friends’ are false and in fact serve as spies to the abuser, just as Stolis was resurrected under the pretence of returning a companion to Lilith but in truth it was just so Satan could know everything she was doing. Eventually, with this abuse technique, the victim begins to feel that they can trust no one, reach out to no one. Lilith was betrayed by her own familiar; that is how deep the control and abuse goes in this relationship, that even that bond cannot be trusted. 

She then proceeds to put on the enchanted ring like it is a wedding ring while saying ‘He took away the one thing I loved’. This is an abuse victim who has lost the one person who didn’t use her, didn’t abuse her, he was the one person who was her escape and so, yes, she even grew to love him (and as I have said, it could have been anyone who treated her equally and had interest in her. That love would have grown with anyone in this situation, it is the way she is treated by the person rather than the person itself that makes this dynamic turn romantic). Because of this, because she had equality and free will with this person, she feels comforted by the feeling of the ring, not just keeping him close but keeping that feeling close. 

Now, when an escape route for a victim is entirely ruined, usually one of the following things happen. Either they resign themselves to this life they are stuck with, and give up the fight entirely, or they try to resist in one last do-or-die attempt. Lilith chooses the latter, even burning everything to do with Adam in order to give her the emotionless strength to destroy Lucifer’s love as he destroyed hers (the fact Lucifer’s love is his daughter, not romantic, is an interest point, because, in retrospect, it emphases the familial dynamic with Adam 2.0, as family, traditionally, means equality, everyone together).

“You did this to me; you made me weak, Adam”

She places blame entirely on Adam 2.0 because she needs to do this in order to survive. She calls herself ‘a grieving widow’, which is her admitting to herself she saw their partnership as legitimate, she had been making official plans around it, she had been making a new life for herself, away from Satan and now she is genuinely mourning not just that life, but the person she was going to make it with. But specifically the use of the term ‘grieving widow’ is especially revealing as it shows how much her dynamic with Adam 2.0 was more of a relationship than her ancient dynamic with Lucifer. Because with Lucifer it is just abuser and victim. And that’s all she has again. 

But being a ‘grieving widow’ is weak in her eyes and she needs to be strong. A lot of abuse victims need to cut out parts of themselves to survive; sometimes it’s the ability to feel things at all, sometimes it’s their empathy for others, something it’s their own goodness, their own morality, anything that they feel will help make the abuse more bearable. 

“I was getting very comfortable in this woman’s flesh suit”

Not only is this Lilith admitting she was starting to enjoy parts of Mary’s life, the line between them blurring a little, but by this phrase we see that Lilith is choosing to forget she was ever just a woman herself, ever just a witch. Being Mary was making her remember that, and this is another part of herself she needs to cut out to survive, she believes; her humanity (because remember, Lilith does have humanity, as that was what she was created as originally and, technically, that humanity is still there, it’s just been pressed down by experiences and abuse and time). Yet as she says this, she is stroking the doll, the gift from Adam 2.0, affectionately, which betrays her words. This wasn’t about getting comfortable, or forgetting she’s in a ‘flesh suit’, she genuinely felt something here, something unquantifiable, and something that can’t be so easily ignored. 

So, because she still has these feelings, all different ones for different reasons, but all very much making her feel things, which, right now, she is reasoning it’s something that will make her weak,  she literally tears them up and destroys them, physically burning them, declaring that she’s now remembering ‘who and what I truly am’, but this isn’t true. What she is remembering to be now is what and who Lucifer has made her into, it’s not actually her. Her is who she is when she’s free from him. 

She then says ‘time to burn the monster’, which with all this in consideration, could mean the monster she has been made into, or that the monster is Lucifer, or it could be the monster is Sabrina because of what Lucifer wants her to be. We, the audience, could even take it to mean all three. But, regardless, as she burns everything, we see a woman who has decided no one can save her, but she isn’t saying ‘no one can save me I’m stuck here’, she is saying ‘no one can save me, I’m going to save myself’. 

And what’s her first step in doing this? Making her own person to control; and this is where we see what can happen with abuse victims-- the abuse cycle begins, where the victim then becomes the abuser. Although, with Lilith it’s not with any actual person, it’s with a creature she creates, just as she was created, well...more specifically how Eve was created; with a rib. And it’s no small coincidence that she has to kill a man to make this creature.

Lilith: I’m your Mother. Do you love me? Adam 3.0: (nods) Lilith: Then you’ll do what I tell you to do. 

This is the only kind of love (With the exception of Adam 2.0, who, technically was loving Mary, not Lilith. Although he seemed to be really into the Lilith changes in Mary?) that Lilith has ever known. And we love from experience, the love we know is the love we show. And so abuse victims, to quote Regina Mills (another complicated character who has abusive and grooming relationships that dictate the Evil Queen she becomes) ‘don’t know how to love very well’. If all you have known is abusive, controlling love, then that’s what you think love is, and that’s what you repeat. That is an abuse cycle.

Now, we come to when we see Lilith with Lucifer properly for the first time. As in, it’s now him permanently here, and him as the man she recalls in her memories, only we discover despite his beautiful face, he just as dark and abusive as ever. 

Lilith: Those things you promised me are going to Sabrina Lucifer: It’s not your turn Lilith: Nor ever. Begging the question; why her?

Abuse victims who feel they have no escape, who have resigned themselves to this life, tend to get defensive against and jealous of other women coming into their life and threatening to take their place. It’s basically the feeling of ‘I put up with this abuse, but at least I reap the benefits’, but when a newcomer arrives, it’s now ‘I suffer the abuse but someone else is reaping the benefits’. It prompts irrational jealousy, which is, personally, what I feel we’ve seen with Lilith towards Sabrina throughout the series; her flip of emotions towards her, her erratic behaviour with her, change of vibes etc, is all linked towards this irrational jealousy caused by the fight for importance, for any kind of benefit,  within an abusive dynamic. 

“Self pity bores me, Lilith. And you know what I’m like when I’m bored”

Lucifer grabs Lilith’s chin forcefully, with a menacing firmness, as he says this, and lifts it, forcing her to look at him. The entire body language as well as the verbal language, the low, implied threat, is so demonstrative of extreme domestic abuse, so much so that it’s entirely impossible to ignore. He is controlling her, his menacing air is as blatant as is her tension, her fear. We see Lilith constantly strong against others, defiant, but here she doesn’t resist, she lets him lift her chin because she has no choice and she opens her eyes to look at him directly, because she knows avoiding him, refusing to look, will make it all worse, he’ll be even angrier, and then she immediately agrees to what he asks of her. If we only had hints and metaphors for abuse here, here we see it beyond metaphors and parallels; it is very literally demonstrated. Long time abuse victims, those who have suffered it constantly, repeatedly, over a long period of time, reach a point where they no longer have to be ‘controlled’ by physical abuse; the threat of it is enough, even the hint of the threat. 

“No good to run; believe me, I’ve tried....Come now, he doesn’t like to be kept waiting...and now you have to come to him or he will come to you and destroy everyone and everything in his path”

This language is extremely resigned-- we saw Lilith broken before, but still with fight left in her, but this time the fight is gone entirely. And we also see her resignation to another victim being made. Yes, Sabrina is her ‘competition’ and taking her promised place as Queen of Hell, but the entire dynamic here can also be taken as an abuse victim bearing witness to another victim being added and having nothing they can do to stop it. The only power they have is to try and lessen the pain of the transition, given them the advice they didn’t get. 

When we have ‘The Beginning’ scene, Lilith says ‘I was his handmaiden and he was my master’, so that we see from the off, from mere language alone, that he has always controlled her through the illusion of partnership, which is exactly what abusers do. They don’t arrive and abuse immediately from the beginning, it’s subtle at first, disguised as simply being caring and protective; ‘I just want to take care of you’, ‘You’re so small, I can protect you’, ‘you mustn’t do that; I’ll do that for you’. 

Sabrina: Why do you still serve him, even now? Lilith: It’s all I’ve ever known

This is very much a typical abuse victim answer, and the entire framing of the scene, the way Lilith and Sabrina are sat in the chairs, the luxurious surroundings, the waiting on the other side of a curtain to be called by the ‘boss’ echoes a human trafficking scenario, with the new ‘livestock’ being brought for presentation, the former victim, ‘promoted’ to assistant, and thus made to recruit the newer ones. This is especially emphasised when Lilith nods at Sabrina and she steps through the curtain to meet Lucifer who is sat there like the head pimp of hell. 

“He’s not a God. He’s just a fallen angel”

This quote is extremely important, because it’s a reiteration of her moment in the bathroom where she reminds herself that Lucifer isn’t everywhere and can’t see everything, but also because it’s her admitting aloud, to other people, that Satan may be powerful but he isn’t all powerful. She is admitting her abuser is beatable; this, along with sharing his weak spots with the Spellmans, is her breaking away from the abuse

But when it fails and Lilith is sent to prepare Sabrina for the wedding regardless, we see her crying at the dress, because despite everything, despite admitting he is an abuser, talking of gutting him, sharing his weak spots, she still wants to be his Queen (well, Queen in general, but at this point she believes he is going to rule, so Queen only exists besides him) because despite everything, abuse victims do often return to their abusers, or at least still want their love, especially if they know they are trapped with them regardless (a logic of making abuse easier if there’s love there, at least).

Yet despite this, despite this pain, despite still wanting his love, despite wanting to be Queen, Lilith manages to say to Sabrina ‘You’ll make a wonderful Queen’ and it does sound genuine, resigned, yes, but also genuine. This is partially because she knows Sabrina no more wants the title than Lilith wants to lose it. There is a break of the abuse cycle here (the cycle she did continue with her Adam-Monster) as she is broken, losing, but she manages to wish Sabrina well, perhaps even manage to suffer less than Lilith did. In the room we have two resigned women, two women abused by the same man, together, allied even if they don’t win. 

Sabrina, however, hasn’t been broken yet, she hasn’t suffered yet as Lilith has, she hasn’t known Lucifer as long as Lilith has, and that’s what she observes

“Plucky till the end. But you’ll learn. He always gets his way”

There’s something so entirely resigned and cynical about that, and it also implies that the rebellions we have seen against Lucifer in Part 2 are, perhaps, not Lilith’s only rebellions, that there had been times in the past when she has tried to win. We can imagine that after leaving the garden because she refused to submit to First Adam, and then agreeing to serve Lucifer because he promised to make her Queen, she must have realised, after time, that she was being to Lucifer what she refused to be with First Adam, that she has ended up with the same fate regardless. And Lilith is a strong person, she’s strong, she knows her own mind, she’s determined, we can easily imagine she began to push against him, to try and claim what was promised, to get her equality again, but like with abuse victims who fight back in the beginning, they are beaten down so many times, that their rebellions become smaller and smaller until they stop rebelling at all.

When it is the Masquerade scene and the coronation, Lilith is constantly tense, holding back a wave of understandable emotions, ranging from fear to jealousy to resignation to sadness to determination, but as she is feeling all these things, Sabrina looks back at her through her mask and smiles, she even looks at Lilith as the crown is placed on her head; there is an alliance here, two victims of abuse at the hands of the same abuser standing together and Sabrina’s gazes are showing that support. The fellow victim saying I am with you and I am fighting beside you.

And I think it’s as much this visual confirmation of alliance and support, as well as things that happened in the lead up to this moment, that prompts Lilith into her ultimate defiance against Lucifer. A defiance that is for Sabrina’s sake more than her own; she physically, by her own magic, holds Satan back, stopping him from attacking Sabrina physically. We can presume he has attacked Lilith physically before-- it’s evidenced in the way he grabbed her chin, the way she cleans his feet, the way she flinches when he gets angry or comes too close-- but she uses her power to stop him from ever even starting on Sabrina. Not a hair is harmed on her head. 

“Hold that nasty thought; I can’t restrain him forever”

The long-term victim is finally standing up to her abuser, calling him out for what he is, and she is doing it for herself yes, but she’s also doing it to help another victim. In a mundane drama, this would be the moment where the script would depict the abuser about to hit a young girl, the new girl, and the older victim would bash him around the back of the head with a bat. We’ve all seen those types of scenes, and this is what we’re seeing here as well...only magically. 

Before, even when Lilith advised them how to stop him, how to attack him, she stayed hidden, she didn’t risk exposing her rebellion in case it went wrong, she hedged her bets still out of fear and caution. But in this ultimate moment, it all goes, she doesn’t backtrack, she doesn’t go back to his side and beg forgiveness; she defies him openly and completely. She finally breaks free of the abusive relationship, and considering Lilith was originally created to be the ultimate symbol of womanhood and maternity, I think it’s incredibly important that she does all this in a moment of protecting Sabrina rather than herself. It’s Lilith returning to her true nature; she is the First Woman, she is the woman who said women were equal, she is the woman who would not submit to a man, she is the First Witch, the first to have power, the first to heal. 

And from this, it is extremely important that not only is Lilith crowning herself, taking power for herself without needing any man or any coronation but her own, but that it is Sabrina who hands her the crown. This is two women having defeated the man who had power over them and them each giving one another power in return. They restore each other. This is an entirely female moment. 

“I restore all your witchly powers, so now you may have both power and freedom. And may you never give up either again”

And for the conclusion of Lilith’s abuse narrative, this quote is so incredibly important. Not only is it Lilith restoring Sabrina’s powers and thus showing she no longer sees her as a threat or competition, she no longer views her through jealousy over the attention of a man, but she is also stating she has her freedom. Satan has always demanded they sign the Book of the Beast to get the most out of their powers, he demanded in exchange for power they must always do what he asks, that they belong to him. Lilith is Queen of Hell, but she doesn’t ask for anyone to give up their freedom; she took power for herself way back in The Beginning, and so the new witches can have power for themselves as well. It is very revealing of the type of ruler Lilith will be, a victim who has learned from her abuse rather than choosing to repeat it (giving Sabrina back Ms Wardwell, recalling that she was her favourite teacher, is also further evidence of this)

May Sabrina never give up her power or freedom again, yes, but it is, obviously, implied that Lilith is also speaking of herself and that she will never give up her power or freedom again either as she did that day when she agreed to be Lucifer’s handmaiden. 

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #388

Top Ten Things Tim Burton’s Batman Films Did Right

Thirty years ago, give or take, the first Tim Burton Batman movie was released in cinemas (according to Google, its UK release date was 11th August 1989). Everyone knows the story; it was a phenomenon, a marketing juggernaut, a hit probably beyond what anyone was reasonably expecting. I was too young to understand or appreciate what was going on, but for twenty years or more the image of Batman in the public consciousness was intertwined with Adam West and pop-art frivolity. Suddenly superheroes were “dark” and “grown-up”; suddenly we had multi-million-dollar-grossing properties, franchises, and studios rummaging through their back catalogues of acquired IPs to land the next four-quadrant hit. Throughout the rest of the nineties we got a slew of pulp comic adaptations – The Spirit, The Phantom, Dick Tracy – before the tangled web of Marvel licenses became slightly easier to unpick, and we segued into the millennium on the backs of Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man. Flash-forward to a super-successful Batman reboot, then we hit the MCU with Iron Man, and we all know where that goes. And it all began with Batman!

Except, of course, that’s not quite the whole story. Studios were trying to adapt superheroes and comic books for a number of years, not least because Richard Donner’s Superman had been such a huge hit a decade before Batman. And the Batman films themselves began to deteriorate in quality pretty rapidly. Plus, when viewed from the distance of a couple of decades or more, the supposed dark, gritty, adult storytelling in Burton’s films quickly evaporates. They’re just as camp, silly, and nonsensical as the 1960s show, they’re just visually darker and with more dry ice. Characters strut around in PVC bodysuits; the plots make little to no sense; characterisation is secondary to archetype; and Batman himself is quite divorced from his comic incarnation, killing enemies often capriciously and being much less of a martial artist or detective than he appeared on the page (in fact, Adam West’s Batman does a lot more old-school deducing than any of the cinematic Batmen).

I think a lot of people of my generation, who grew up with Adam West, went through a period of disowning the series because it was light, bright, campy and, essentially, for children; then we grow up and appreciate it all the more for being those things, and also for being a pure and delightful distillation of one aspect of the comics (seriously, there’s nothing in the series that’s not plausibly from a 1950s Batman comic). And I think the same is true of Burton’s films. for all their importance in terms of “legitimising” superhero movies, they have come in for a lot of legitimate criticism, and in the aftermath of Christopher Nolan’s superlative trilogy they began to look very old-fashioned and a much poorer representation of the character. But then, again, we all grow up a little bit and can look back on them as a version of Batman that’s just as valid; they don’t have to be perfect, they don’t have to be definitive, but we can enjoy them for what they are: macabre delights, camp gothic comedies, delightfully stylised adventure stories. They might lack the visual pizazz of a Nolan fight scene or, well, anything in any MCU movie, but they’re very much of a type, even if that type was aped, imitated, and parodied for a full decade following Batman’s release. There’s much to love about Burton’s two bites of the Bat-cherry, and here – at last – I will list my ten favourite aspects of the films (that’s both films, Batman and Batman Returns).

Tim Burton’s Batman isn’t quite my Batman (but, for the record, neither is Christopher Nolan’s), but whatever other criticisms I may have of the films, here are ten things that Burton and his collaborators got absolutely right.

Great Design: seriously, from an aesthetic point of view, they’re gorgeous. The beautiful Anton Furst Gotham, all gothic towers and industrial pipework, is a thing of beauty, and in terms of live-action the design of all of Batman’s vehicles and gadgets has never been bettered. It gives Batman, and his world, a gorgeously distinctive style all its own.

Wonderful Toys: it’s not just the design of the Batmobile and Batwing that impresses (big, bulbous round bits, sweeping curves, spiky wings); its how they’re used. Burton really revels in the gadgets, making Batman a serious tech-head with all manner of grappling hooks, hidden bombs, and secret doo-dahs to give him an upper hand in a fight. It makes up for the wooden combat (a ninja Michael Keaton is not), suggesting this Batman is a smarter fighter than a physical one. Plus all those gadgets could get turned into literal wonderful toys. Ker-ching.

He is the Night: Adam West’s Batman ran around during the day, in light grey spandex with a bright blue cape. Michael Keaton’s Batman only ever came out at night, dressed entirely in thick black body armour, and usually managed to be enveloped in smoke. From his first appearance, beating up two muggers on a Gotham rooftop, he is a threatening, scary, sinister presence. It totally sold the idea of Batman as part-urban legend, part-monster. Burton is fascinated with freaks, and in making his Batman freaky, he made him iconic.

You Wanna Get Nuts?: added to this was Michael Keaton’s performance as Bruce Wayne. Controversial casting due to his comedy background and, frankly, lack of an intimidating physique, he nevertheless utterly convinced. Grimly robotic as Batman, he presented a charming but secretive Bruce Wayne, one who was kind and heartfelt in private, but also serious, determined, and very, very smart. But he also excellently portrayed a dark anger beneath the surface, a mania that Bruce clearly had under control, but which he used to fuel his campaign, and which he allowed out in the divisive but (in my opinion) utterly brilliant “Let’s get nuts!” scene. To this date, the definitive screen Bruce Wayne.

Dance with the Devil: The counterpoint to this was Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Cashing a phenomenal cheque for his troubles, he nevertheless delivered; his Joker is wild, over-the-top, cartoonish but also terrifying. In my late teens I was turned off by the performance, feeling it a pantomime and not reflective of the quiet menace and casual cruelty of, say, Mark Hamill’s Joker; but now I see the majesty of it. You need someone this big to be a believable threat to Batman. No wonder that, with Joker dead, they essentially had to have three villains to replace him in the sequel.

Family: Bruce’s relationship with Alfred is one of the cornerstones of the comic, but really only existed in that capacity since the mid-80s and Year One (which established Alfred as having raised Bruce following his parents’ deaths). So in many ways the very close familial relationship in Batman is a watershed, and certainly the first time many people would have seen that depicted. Michael Gough’s Alfred is benign, charming, very witty, and utterly capable as a co-conspirator. One of the few people to stick around through the Schumacher years, he maintained stability even when everything else was going (rubber) tits up.

Meow: I’ve mostly focussed on Batman here, but by jeebies Batman Returns has a lot going for it too. Max Shreck, the Penguin, “mistletoe is deadly if you eat it”… but pride of place goes to Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman. An utterly bonkers origin but a perfectly pitched character, she was a credible threat, a believable love interest, and an anti-hero worth rooting for, in a tour-de-force performance. Also came along at just the right time for me to experience puberty. If you’re interested. Plus – and this can’t be overstated – she put a live bird into her mouth. For real. I mean, Christ.

Believably Unreal: I used to criticise Batman for being unrealistic, just as campy in its own way as the ‘60s show. But that’s missing the point. It’s a stylised world, clearly not our own thanks to the Furst-stylings. And Burton uses that to his advantage. The gothic stylings help sell the idea of a retro-futuristic rocket-car barrelling through city streets; the mishmash of 80s technology and 40s aesthetics gives us carte blanche for a zoot-suited Joker and his tracksuited henchmen to tear up a museum to a Prince soundtrack. It’s a world where Max Shreck, looking like Christopher Walken was electrocuted in a flour factory, can believably run a campaign to get Penguin elected mayor, even after he nearly bites someone’s nose off. It’s crazy but it works.

Believably Corrupt: despite the craziness and unreality, the first Batman at least does have a strong dose of realism running through it. The gangsters may be straight out of the 40s but they’ve adopted the gritty grimness of the intervening decades, with slobby cop Eckhart representing corrupt law enforcement. Basically, despite the surrealism on display, the sense of Gotham as a criminal cesspool is very well realised, and extends to such a high level that the only realistic way to combat any of it is for a sad rich man to dress up as Dracula and drive a rocket-car at a clown.

The Score: I’ve saved this for last because, despite everything, Danny Elfman’s Batman theme is clearly the greatest and strongest legacy of the Burton era. Don’t come at me with your “dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner-Batman” nonsense. Elfman’s Batman score is sublime. Like John Williams’ Superman theme, it’s iconic, it’s distinctive, and as far as I’m concerned it’s what the character should sound like. I have absolutely no time for directors who think you should ever make a Batman film with different music. It’s as intrinsically linked with the character as the Star Wars theme is with, well, Star Wars. It’s perfect and beautiful and the love-love-love the fact that they stuck it in the Animated Series too.

Whelp, there we are. The ten best things about Burton’s two Batman movies. I barely spoke about the subsequent films because, well, they’re both crap. No, seriously, they’re bad films. Even Batman Forever. Don’t start.

[delphinidin4]

 Forty-five percent of adults say they’re preoccupied with their weight some or all of the time—an 11-point rise since 1990. Nearly half of 3- to 6- year old girls say they worry about being fat. 

...

 I have never written a story where so many of my sources cried during interviews, where they shook with anger describing their interactions with doctors and strangers and their own families.

Chances of a woman classified as obese achieving a “normal” weight:.008%

SOURCE: AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, 2015

Diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism

“As a kid, I thought that fat people were just lonely and sad—almost like these pathetic lost causes. So I want to show that we get to experience love, too. I’m not some 'fat friend' or some dude's chubby chasing dream. I'm genuinely happy. I just wish I'd known how possible that was when I was a kiddo.”— CORISSA ENNEKING

“If you looked at anything other than my weight,” Enneking says now, “I had an eating disorder. And my doctor was congratulating me.”

...

This phenomenon is not merely anecdotal. Doctors have shorter appointments with fat patients and show less emotional rapport in the minutes they do have. Negative words—“noncompliant,” “overindulgent,” “weak willed”—pop up in their medical histories with higher frequency. ... In 2011, the Sun-Sentinel polled OB-GYNs in South Florida and discovered that 14 percent had barred all new patients weighing more than 200 pounds.

...

When Joy Cox, an academic in New Jersey, was 16, she went to the hospital with stomach pains. The doctor didn’t diagnose her dangerously inflamed bile duct, but he did, out of nowhere, suggest that she’d get better if she stopped eating so much fried chicken. “He managed to denigrate my fatness and my blackness in the same sentence,” she says.

“There is so much agency taken from marginalized groups to mute their voices and mask their existence. Being depicted as a female CEO—one who is also black and fat—means so much to me. It is a representation of the reclamation of power in the boardroom, classroom and living room of my body. I own all of this.”— JOY COX

Physicians are often required, in writing, to prove to hospital administrators and insurance providers that they have brought up their patient’s weight and formulated a plan to bring it down—regardless of whether that patient came in with arthritis or a broken arm or a bad sunburn. Failing to do that could result in poor performance reviews, low ratings from insurance companies or being denied reimbursement if they refer patients to specialized care. 

...

Three separate studies have found that fat women are more likely to die from breast and cervical cancers than non-fat women, a result partially attributed to their reluctance to see doctors and get screenings. Erin Harrop, a researcher at the University of Washington, studies higher-weight women with anorexia, who, contrary to the size-zero stereotype of most media depictions, are twice as likely to report vomiting, using laxatives and abusing diet pills. Thin women, Harrop discovered, take around three years to get into treatment, while her participants spent an average of 13 and a half years waiting for their disorders to be addressed.

...

If Sonya ever forgets that she is fat, the world will remind her. She has stopped taking the bus, she tells me, because she can sense the aggravation of the passengers squeezing past her. Sarah, the tech CEO, tenses up when anyone brings bagels to a work meeting. If she reaches for one, are her employees thinking, “There goes the fat boss”? If she doesn’t, are they silently congratulating her for showing some restraint?

Emily says it’s the do-gooders who get to her, the women who stop her on the street and tell her how brave she is for wearing a sleeveless dress on a 95-degree day.

Ratio of soda and candy ads seen by black children compared to white children: 2:1

SOURCE: UCONN RUDD CENTER FOR FOOD POLICY AND OBESITY, 2015

This is how fat-shaming works: It is visible and invisible, public and private, hidden and everywhere at the same time. Research consistently finds that larger Americans (especially larger women) earn lower salaries and are less likely to be hired and promoted.... What’s worse, only a few cities and one state (nice work, Michigan) officially prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of weight.

...Paradoxically, as the number of larger Americans has risen, the biases against them have become more severe. More than 40 percent of Americans classified as obese now say they experience stigma on a daily basis, a rate far higher than any other minority group. And this does terrible things to their bodies. According to a 2015 study, fat people who feel discriminated against have shorter life expectancies than fat people who don't. “These findings suggest the possibility that the stigma associated with being overweight,” the study concluded, “is more harmful than actually being overweight.”

...

Kids as young as 3 describe their larger classmates with words like “mean,” “stupid” and “lazy.”

And yet, despite weight being the number one reason children are bullied at school, America’s institutions of public health continue to pursue policies perfectly designed to inflame the cruelty. TV and billboard campaigns still use slogans like “Too much screen time, too much kid” and “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.” Cat Pausé, a researcher at Massey University in New Zealand, spent months looking for a single public health campaign, worldwide, that attempted to reduce stigma against fat people and came up empty. In an incendiary case of good intentions gone bad, about a dozen states now send children home with “BMI report cards,” an intervention unlikely to have any effect on their weight but almost certain to increase bullying from the people closest to them. [I have a friend who had to take a paper home in high school telling her family she was obese. Now, in her late twenties, she’s still dealing with the emotional scars.]

...

The effects of weight bias get worse when they’re layered on top of other types of discrimination. A 2012 study found that African-American women are more likely to become depressed after internalizing weight stigma than white women. Hispanic and black teenagers also have significantly higher rates of bulimia. And, in a remarkable finding, rich people of color have higher rates of cardiovascular disease than poor people of color—the opposite of what happens with white people. One explanation is that navigating increasingly white spaces, and increasingly higher stakes, exerts stress on racial minorities that, over time, makes them more susceptible to heart problems.

...

But perhaps the most unique aspect of weight stigma is how it isolates its victims from one another. For most minority groups, discrimination contributes to a sense of belongingness, a community in opposition to a majority. Gay people like other gay people; Mormons root for other Mormons. Surveys of higher-weight people, however, reveal that they hold many of the same biases as the people discriminating against them. In a 2005 study, the words obese participants used to classify other obese people included gluttonous, unclean and sluggish.

...

Fat people, though, never get a moment of declaring their identity, of marking themselves as part of a distinct group. They still live in a society that believes weight is temporary, that losing it is urgent and achievable, that being comfortable in their bodies is merely “glorifying obesity.” This limbo, this lie, is why it’s so hard for fat people to discover one another or even themselves. “No one believes our It Gets Better story,” says Tigress Osborn, the director of community outreach for the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. “You can’t claim an identity if everyone around you is saying it doesn’t or shouldn’t exist.”

“I think some folks are genuinely surprised that a man who looks like him is with a woman like me. As a fat person, I'm very aware of when I'm being stared at—and I have never been looked at this much before. So I thought that taking the photo in public would be a good idea. It feels subversive to show my fat body doing regular stuff the world believes I don't or can't do.”— EMILY

Since 1980, the obesity rate has doubled in 73 countries and increased in 113 others. And in all that time, no nation has reduced its obesity rate. Not one.

...

The problem is that in America, like everywhere else, our institutions of public health have become so obsessed with body weight that they have overlooked what is really killing us: our food supply. Diet is the leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for more than five times the fatalities of gun violence and car accidents combined. But it’s not how much we’re eating—Americans actually consume fewer calories now than we did in 2003. It’s what we’re eating.

For more than a decade now, researchers have found that the quality of our food affects disease risk independently of its effect on weight. Fructose, for example, appears to damage insulin sensitivity and liver function more than other sweeteners with the same number of calories. People who eat nuts four times a week have 12 percent lower diabetes incidence and a 13 percent lower mortality rate regardless of their weight. All of our biological systems for regulating energy, hunger and satiety get thrown off by eating foods that are high in sugar, low in fiber and injected with additives. And which now, shockingly, make up 60 percent of the calories we eat.

4% of all agricultural subsidies go to fruits and vegetables.

SOURCE: ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP, 2014-16

But that’s still no reason to despair. There’s a lot we can do right now to improve fat people’s lives—to shift our focus for the first time from weight to health and from shame to support.

...

In 2017, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the expert panel that decides which treatments should be offered for free under Obamacare, found that the decisive factor in obesity care was not the diet patients went on, but how much attention and support they received while they were on it. Participants who got more than 12 sessions with a dietician saw significant reductions in their rates of prediabetes and cardiovascular risk. Those who got less personalized care showed almost no improvement at all.

“My son and I both like to play the hero. There wasn't necessarily any intentional symbolism in the costumes we chose, but I am definitely a member of the rebellion, and I see my role as an eating disorders researcher as trying to fight for justice and a better world. Also, I like that I'm sweaty, dirty and messy, not done up with makeup or with my hair down in this picture. I like that I'm not hiding my stomach, thighs or arms. Not because I'm comfortable being photographed like that, but because I want to be—and I want others to feel free to be like that, too.”— ERIN HARROP

A review of 44 international studies found that school-based activity programs didn’t affect kids’ weight, but improved their athletic ability, tripled the amount of time they spent exercising and reduced their daily TV consumption by up to an hour. Another survey showed that two years of getting kids to exercise and eat better didn’t noticeably affect their size but did improve their math scores—an effect that was greater for black kids than white kids.

You see this in so much of the research: The most effective health interventions aren't actually health interventions—they are policies that ease the hardship of poverty and free up time for movement and play and parenting. Developing countries with higher wages for women have lower obesity rates, and lives are transformed when healthy food is made cheaper. A pilot program in Massachusetts that gave food stamp recipients an extra 30 cents for every $1 they spent on healthy food increased fruit and vegetable consumption by 26 percent. Policies like this are unlikely to affect our weight. They are almost certain, however, to significantly improve our health.

...

What does work, Corrigan says, is for fat people to make it clear to everyone they interact with that their size is nothing to apologize for. “When you pity someone, you think they’re less effective, less competent, more hurt,” he says. “You don’t see them as capable. The only way to get rid of stigma is from power.”

...

This has always been the great hope of the fat-acceptance movement. (“We’re here, we’re spheres, get used to it” was one of the slogans in the 1990s.) But this radical message has long since been co-opted by clothing brands, diet companies and soap corporations. Weight Watchers has rebranded as a “lifestyle program,” but still promises that its members can shrink their way to happiness. Mainstream apparel companies market themselves as “body positive” but refuse to make clothes that fit the plus-size models on their own billboards.

...

“Fat activism isn’t about making people feel better about themselves,” Pausé says. “It’s about not being denied your civil rights and not dying because a doctor misdiagnoses you.”

...

There is no magical cure. There is no time machine. There is only the revolutionary act of being fat and happy in a world that tells you that’s impossible.

“We all have to do our best with the body that we have,” [Ginette Lenham] says. “And leave everyone else’s alone.”

[piracytheorist]

Reactions to this post hating on fanfic, that the original poster/hater will never read. Sadly.

(I'm doing this partly in a live-blog fashion, so keep that in mind.)

1) But I/we aren’t trying to make any money out of it!

Well, see, this is where “illegal” comes in. You can’t break into somebody’s house, even if you don’t mean to steal anything. You can’t camp in someone’s backyard without permission, even if you aren’t raising a marijuana crop back there. And you can’t use someone’s copyrighted characters for your own purposes, no matter what those purposes are.

That's bullshit. This is bullshit. And btw, the law isn't always right, let's not forget. You can't compare those things; you're practically saying every musician who ever played a variation/remix of an existing temporary music piece without asking for the rights to use them but also without demanding money to show their work, are criminals. I guess say goodbye to street musicians. You're saying anyone who paints themselves a copy (or a variation) of Picasso's Guernica and hangs it in a public space (say, a coffee shop) is a criminal. Bullshit.

Oddly enough, the notion of using someone else’s characters never occurred to me. I just tried to do it on my own. Surprise! It worked.

Oddly enough, not everyone's like you. Surprise! The world doesn't turn around you.

[...] are you getting positive feedback because some fans are so hooked on the characters that they’ll read anything involving those names (whether the writing accurately reflects those characters or not)? One real easy way to find out. Write anything you want, using Jamie Fraser, Edward Cullen, Harry Potter _and_ Dr. Who….and then change the characters’ names before you post it. Simple. Find All: “Jamie Fraser”. Replace with: “Joe Kerastopolous”. No problemo, all your own work, and any praise you get is duly earned.

How does this even make sense? The only thing this woman cares about are what names we use in fanfiction? If we don't then everything is solved?

4) But nobody would read stuff I wrote if it wasn’t about characters they already like!

Possibly true, possibly not. Depends on how good a writer you are, and how you go about displaying your work once you’ve written it. But—allowing for the moment that this argument holds water—what you’re saying is that a) you deserve an audience, no matter what, and b) you’d prefer to exploit someone else’s talent and hard work, rather than go to the trouble of making your own way.

Way to encourage newbie writers!

I already mentioned the shit she said about Donald Duck being created by Carl Barks. And she was paid by the Walt Disney Corporation, for crying out loud.

[...] if you want to write stories for the Silver Surfer or Superman, go talk to Marvel or DC, and see if they’re taking new submissions or would let you write a sample script.

You know, not everyone wants to be a full-time writer. Some only want to do it in their free time after a work that has nothing to do with writing. What she's saying is to either dedicate yourself fully to writing or not at all. Again, way to encourage newbie writers.

This is, btw, one reason why fan-fic versions of popular characters so often seem superficial; they lack the depth that the Real Thing has—the writer has merely grabbed at the broadest impression of the character, not built them in complex layers.

Did she just ditch the entirety of fanfiction on the basis that they aren't as DEEP as the Real Thing? Even if in a lot of cases the opposite applies?

I understand the urge to take a story that’s fired your imagination and carry it on or explore other avenues that it might have taken. ¬_Everybody_ does this, when they’ve seen a movie or read a book that captured their imagination [...] Giving people intriguing possibilities is one of the hallmarks of good fiction. But what you do in the privacy of your own imagination is a matter of total freedom; what you do in public is not.

So... we have no freedom of speech then? I mean, I get calling out someone who is talking rude in public, but that's still this asshole's right, as it is my right to call them out.

Beyond the specific arguments against the concept remains the unfortunate fact that a terrible lot of fan-fic is outright cringe-worthy and ought to be suppressed on purely aesthetic grounds.

So are so, so many published books that had no connection to fanfiction whatsoever. Didn't see you going against publishing in general.

Now, I don’t go looking for fan-fiction written about my characters; in fact, I try _not¬_ to see it. But now and then someone sends me a link to a site displaying it [...]

See, if the writer didn't send you the link themselves, you shouldn't blame them for you getting exposed to it! There's a reason the majority of fanfiction writers don't want to send their writings to the original content creators. But you would’ve known that, had you asked the fanfiction community first before you tried to paint us as horrible people.

Now, look. Human beings are hardwired to be interested in sex. We just _are_. Any kind of sex, performed by anyone, anytime, anywhere. Bad sex, good sex, poorly depicted sex, elegantly drawn sex…it doesn’t matter. We have a genetic compulsion to _look_. We’ll look at _anything_ having sex, human or not.

And on your right side, you can see erasure of asexuality.

But…imagine opening your daily mail and finding a letter detailing an explicit sexual encounter between, say, your twenty-one-year-old daughter and your forty-eight-year-old male neighbor---written by the neighbor. At the bottom it says, “Fiction! Just my imagination. All cool, right?” This would perhaps prevent your calling the police, but I repeat…ick. I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family—why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality?

Is she actually comparing her protective feelings to her fictional characters with the protective feelings to her own family? Is this woman mentally okay?

And personally, I would have called the police.

[...] Emmett someone (who I _think_ is from Twilight; I sort of hope it’s not the willowy young “bottom” from the TV show “Queer as Folk”…)

I'm treading carefully here since I haven't watched the show... but I do get an air of homophobia and discrimination against people who are into BDSM. Wouldn't surprise me, tbh, but I can't be sure.

I also mentioned the fact that she was angry someone wanted to write a fanfiction with her character in order to raise money for a charity. Hm. And then tried to cover it. Of course she would.

People in the book end of the trade watch these developments with a lot of interest—and some apprehension, knowing what happened to the music industry with the advent of Napster and file-sharing. The music industry still exists, of course, but it’s a lot harder for the creative people who _make_ music to make a living from it.

Dude, file-sharing harms the music industry because they take the original content and give it to the world for free. Writing fanfiction isn't copying the entirety of your book and giving it to the world for free. That's still file-sharing, blame the pirates. Fanfiction can fucking promote your work without you having to offer a single penny.

People who read my books tend to be both intelligent (not just because they like _my_ books, but by and large, it takes a fair amount of intellectual resilience to want to take on 1000-page books of any kind), and creative.

LOL honey, get over yourself already. Also, the Twilight series consist, overall, of over 2k pages. Does that mean anything for the people who read it? I read three of those books. Am I intelligent and creative too?

Characters—good characters, “real” characters—derive their reality from the person who created them. They _are_ the person who created them, refracted through the lens of that writer’s experience, imagination, love, fear, and craft. Another writer seeking to duplicate that character might equal—or conceivably surpass--the craft; they can’t touch the essence.

When you mess with my stuff, you’re not messing with my characters—you’re messing with _me_.

Who are the writers of the Outlander TV series again? Oh that's okay because you're making money out of it?

readers occasionally _do_ stumble over bits of fan-fiction, and—while they realize they’re reading fan-fiction at the time— still incorporate these _faux_ stories into their comprehension and memory of the real series.

I wonder if the script for the Outlander TV series is exactly, word-for-word the same as the script in the book series. Has she complained about that? (I’m actually asking this, though, I’ve no clue) Why should she complain about fanfiction? Because she doesn't make money out of the latter?

There is also the issue of a fan at some point writing a piece that inadvertently picks up a plotline that I have myself written, but that hasn’t yet appeared in print—and then turning around and claiming that I’ve stolen it from him/her [...].

*them. Also, that's one problematic behaviour. She's literally judging all fanfiction writers based on one problematic behaviour, what a grown-up.

Anyway, yeah, even if at some point I would have wanted to give her books a try... now I know I never will, purely out of spite. 

[aion-rsa]

In First Become Ashes, K.M. Szpara Makes Us Wonder if Magic is Real

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

K.M. Szpara‘s debut Docile was one of the most binge-able, divisive reads of 2020. A near-future drama set in a world in debt crisis (imagine that), Docile explores the violence of capitalism at the most intimate of interpersonal levels, as we follow Elisha as he sells himself to trillionaire Alex in order to pay off his family’s debts. With Docile, Szpara, a queer and trans Baltimore-based author, proved himself willing to dive into some complex, culturally loaded subjects to tell a science fiction story that reflects some central yet ignored truths about our contemporary society. For me, a White reader, the ways in which Docile works outweigh it doesn’t (one major criticism: the book’s avoidance of addressing America’s real-life history of slavery), but this will be different for every reader.

In his second book, First, Becomes Ashes (out today!), Szpara is similarly ambitious in topic and theme. Ashes is a standalone novel that takes place in the aftermath of the destruction of a maybe-magical cult, following four different characters caught up in the messy repercussions of the FBI’s raiding of the Fellowship of the Anointed. Much of the novel’s early perspective comes from Lark, an almost 25-year-old who believes wholeheartedly in the teachings of cult leader Nova, and that he has been chosen to learn magic and martial arts in order to hunt the monsters that ravage the world outside the Fellowship gates. Like Docile, it’s a startlingly unique premise. Despite having four separate POV characters, Ashes is able to maintain a mystery around some of the fundamental truths of this world, leaving the reader to wonder if magic exists in this world or not.

Den of Geek: Where did the inspiration for the book that would become First, Become Ashes begin?

K.M. Szpara: The idea hit me like a comeback three hours too late! I’ve always been interested in cults and faith and belonging. As a speculative fiction author, I had to give it a fantasy twist. Magic is something many of us have wished for since childhood. What if it was real—and then what if we were told it wasn’t?  

This book has several POV characters, but you very much begin with Lark’s POV. Can you talk about how you went about deciding who would be POV characters and how you came up with the pacing for expanding the perspective-scope of this story?

One of my favorite ways to create tension is to show how different people experience the same event(s). Ashes shows dissolution of a cult from four points of view. Two “privileged” members who are Anointed—one a believer and one a doubter. One member who is a Fellow, a regular layperson. One outsider who has dreamed of having the magic the Anointed claim. Each of these characters experienced life differently before and after the Fellowship’s dissolution and they’re all tied together in deeply personal emotional ways. The pacing really comes down to knowing how to choose each chapter’s POV. And for me, it’s which character will be most effected by an event. For example, Lark performs healing magic on himself in front of Calvin. Though Lark is the one being healed and performing magic, it’s Calvin who’s seeing magic up close for the first time. It’s Calvin who’s wanted magic his whole life and is inches from it. That’s what drives the story forward.

Something you do in both Docile and Ashes that I love is give us a POV character who is an outsider to a world the reader will most likely recognize and then offer Nacirema-esque observation from that protagonist-outsider. Is this something you do intentionally? Why are you interested in telling stories in this way?

I had not heard of Nacirema until this question, but I love this observation! For anyone else hearing this for the first time, a cursory Google tells me that the term Nacirema is “American” spelled backwards and is a term used in sociology and anthropology to show distance while studying people in the United States of America. (I’m not a social scientist—amateur Googler over here!) I use outsider characters in this way because I want readers to see how aspects of their lives mirror the characters’ lives, how our society mirrors these harmful fictional societies. It’s easy to read about a cult and think you would never be drawn in, but that happens to people like you and me—and there are aspects of the U.S. that are cultish but not named in that way. I want people to see how they have been drawn in, how hard it is to unlearn and escape that harm. Because sometimes it looks and feels like magic and that’s all you’ve ever wanted.

I love all of the fandom explanation and outsider observation in this book. Why did you want to have a fan character like Calvin as such a central part of this story, and how did you want to depict fandom more generally?

When I think about who would be deeply invested in magic being real, it’s people like me who grew up reading SFF, wishing I’d walk through a portal to another world—even though the stories that took place in them were full of danger. There was magic! I’ve joked with friends that if one of them texted to tell me a real wizard or vampire or werewolf was in their house, I would absolutely drop everything and go to them. I want to see! I want to lift the veil! That’s what Lilian does when her BFF Calvin texts that an Anointed member of the Fellowship is in their hotel room.

But that doesn’t mean Calvin’s motivations are pure and good—nor are they malicious! Like fandom, he’s imperfect. He wants magic and monsters to be real so badly that he’s sometimes willing to hurt others in pursuit of his dreams. Though Calvin doesn’t represent fandom as a whole—what one person could?—I did want to show someone who’s helpful and harmful, family-friendly and sexy, successful and unfulfilled. Complicated, like most of us and our interests are!

A central tension of Ashes is the mystery of if Lark’s magic is real, which creates this experience as a reader of not totally understanding as you’re reading what genre the book itself even is—is it speculative fiction or is it something else? It was a really unique reading experience, and led me to wonder as I was reading if and why I cared about classifying it. What a cool use of the “unreliable” narrator! Can you talk about creating and sustaining this tension/mystery and what you wanted to do with it?

It was difficult! Whether magic appears successful depends on the chapter’s POV character and its place within the arc. Sometimes a spell’s result is instant and sometimes it’s implied. Often faith is the difference. In that way we’re all unreliable narrators—everyone is only telling their own truth as they see it, as they’ve been raised and taught to see it. I wanted to keep readers wondering, not just for the thrill of “is magic real?” but why they’re asking. Who do they believe—who do they want to believe? Does it matter who’s “right”? Why? Read and answer for yourself! Ashes is a fantasy novel… if you want it to be.

Were the in-universe discussion of preferred pronouns always part of this story and the culture of the Fellowship? 

Yes. Cults don’t exist because they seem unattractive and survivors often have at least some fond memories. I wanted to create a place that felt somewhat harmonious and fruitful, which included the ability to find and be yourself with full acceptance. Something I wish existed outside of my imaginary cult, as well!

Both Ashes and Docile depict experiences and topics that are very sensitive for many readers—i.e. abuse, rape, and sadomasochism—and that therefore most “mainstream” authors either shy away from completely or depict very superficially. Why are you interested in exploring these themes in your storytelling? What conclusions, if any, are you hoping for readers to come away with in relation to these themes specifically?

Firstly, no authors are required to deal with such heavy topics. I choose to; they’re common experiences and I’m not interested in glossing over them. I want to show how rape and abuse and conditioning affect people both in the moment and long after. And the sadomasochism in Ashes is not a depiction of a healthy S&M experience, but that’s not to imply that S&M is inherently unhealthy—because it absolutely can be! And lots of real people experiment with and engage in various forms of BDSM, sometimes healthy, sometimes not. I’m not writing guidebooks or after-school specials. My goal is not to portray perfect relationships or characters taking all the right steps. It is to show emotional truths. To portray how complicated and messy people are and reality is when it comes to traumatic situations.

It’s interesting to me that you use 25 as the coming-of-age age in this story. Can you talk about why you made that decision?

Ages like eighteen and twenty-one only mean something because we have decided they do. The Fellowship doesn’t operate by our rules, so I chose twenty-five, which felt like a natural milestone as a quarter century. Additionally, I wanted those leaving the Fellowship on their quests to be young adults (not in the publishing category sense) who were old enough to consider themselves competent but not so old that they’d had a lot of time as an adult to reflect on their experiences. A lot is ingrained in children and teenagers and I personally spent a lot of my early twenties both learning more and new information about myself and the world, but also unlearning some of the harmful aspects I’d absorbed from my younger years. It’s a time when many are figuring out their place in the world as independent adults, for the first time, not unlike the Anointed going out on their quests.

Are there things you especially learned in the writing and publishing of Docile that inspired how you wrote and edited this story?

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It was nice to edit a book having already done so once because the mystery was gone—but that didn’t make it any easier! Second books are their own brand of tricky—and I like to try new things with craft, to push myself, which is fun but also stressful. There is a feeling of both familiarity while writing a second book, and also fear that maybe you wrote that first book my accident somehow and will never be able to do it again. Luckily, I have an awesome team at Tordotcom Publishing and they saw me through it, again. 

First, Become Ashes is now available to buy wherever books are sold, including via Tor.com.

Note: First, Become Ashes contains explicit sadomasochism and sexual content, as well as abuse and consent violations, including rape.

The post In First Become Ashes, K.M. Szpara Makes Us Wonder if Magic is Real appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3dDRjqT

[ithisatanytime]

i deny the holocaust

 Most of the “EVIDENCE” is witness testimony gathered during the nuremberg trials, and those were a fucking joke and everyone knew it. the “confessions” are now known to have been extracted via testicular torture, which is like regular torture but they torture your fucking balls, many of them had shattered testicles and all of them suffered beatings during interrogations. which sure fine if they were cold blooded murderers of 6 million innocent people, but the holocaust narrative is psychically impossible, and frankly, stupid. incinerating the bodies the way they say, is impossible, literally impossible, and there are testimonies given of bodies cremated regularly in under a half hour, which is fucking absurd. with modern tech, under ideal conditions, it takes over an hour, and then there is maintenance that needs to be done, and when i say an hour i mean from the time the furnace turns on until the body is reduced to ash, and cremation technology has come a long way in the eighty years since the holocaust never happened. with modern technology, under ideal circumstances, meaning you dont even have to load bodies in, or clean out the furnaces or maintain them, again with MODERN technology, it would have taked no less than 30 years to do what they said was done in 4. its beyond impossible, its actually ridiculous, and this is when you give the narrative every conceivable advantage.

   There were  tons of jewish concentration camp survivors who were interviewed by steven spielburg for his film schindlers list, their interviews were used as part of a making of documentary. they left out the dozens of “death camp” survivors who described the death camps as work camps, where no one was gassed, and they were treated rather fairly, there was even currency printed specifically for the deathcamps so that they would get paid for their work, there were hospitals that treated the ill (both of the most famous first hand accounts of the holocaust, “Night” and “the diary of anne frank include accounts of jews being treated for illnesses at on site hospitals, not experimented on just treated) which makes sense if you are running a work camp, and makes no sense if you are running a death camp. also the emaciated figures we see, i think these comprise the most compelling of the evidence, its a striking visual, until you look up american pows in japan, and see those same gaunt figures, google it right now and click images, tell me those men are not the same as the ones you see in the holocaust propaganda, typhus was pandemic around the world at the time, and thats what it does to you. notice the piles of emaciated corpses, never a fat corps among them in the photos, but according to the propaganda, most of the jews were killed upon arrival at the camp, and yet they appear to be either in the advanced stages of extreme starvation OR suffering from typhus. there are documented cases of the guards at these “death camps” (work camps) who were EXECUTED for STRIKING and stealing from prisoners, seems like a terrible waist of manpower if the goal was to kill them all anyway, the red cross inspected many of what we once called deathcamps and found no evidence of any wrong doing, not once. there are no aerial photographs from spy planes depicting the massive smoke that would have been created by continuosly cremating bodies (at impossible speed and/or volume). there exists not one single document even referencing this massive industrial under taking, and the germans were notorious for keeping records. i could litereally go on all day, but again the reason you believe this impossible story has nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with emotion.

  in my early twenties i would be exposed to some holocaust denialism, and it was always swiftly debunked. this is a tactic called (ironically) poisoning the well, whereby you purposefully seed your enemy with bad arguments to be used against you so you can easily tear them apart and make anyone questioning the narrative seem ridiculous as a result. so i was pretty skeptical until i did the math myself. its not possible, its not even close to possible, there is no way in this universe that happened. The tiny minority of ethnic jews did in germany what they attempted to do in every country they ever lived in, they took over. the german revolution of 1919 just after world war one ended, communist jews (look up the leadership of the 1919 german revolution, 7/10 were ethnic jews) and the german people were subjected to all kinds of terrible shit, mostly starvation as they bled the country dry from the top. they were also pushing things like gender theory (first ever gender reassignment was in berling, just prior to hitlers rise to power) promoted prostitution, owned the newspapers and film studios. basically everything we are seeing in america and the rest of the west today, it was called the weimar era, and the germans living under the weimar jews universally despised them. when the nazis rose to power they tried to deport the jews living in germany but no one wanted them, you see ethnic jews were notorious for doing this kind of thing, they had been kicked out of over 100 countries throughout history as a result of doing this kind of shit, so no other countries wanted them seriously there was a meeting of dozens of leaders from countries around the world and the only country who agreed to accept jews was the fucking dominican republic. they would still have this reputation today, if not for the holocaust narrative making any kind of racial classification the ultimate taboo, thats in part why they invented it, the other part was to justify britain just awarding them someone elses country while they were still living in it! the fact that they got away with that is amazing, really think about that if nothing else, because something bad supposedly happened to them, they were just GIVEN a COUNTRY that not only didnt belong to them, but was inhabited already by muslims who believed it to be their sacred land. its insane! anyway hitler just wanted to deport them and he tried (google the haavara agreement, its literally excepted history that hitler tried like hell to deport them, which is a bad idea if your final solution is the complete annihilation of the jewish race and not to deport them) when the jews around the world declared war on germany (literally a new york times headline at the time) via staging a massive worldwide boycott using the papers they owned and all the political clout they purchased via owning the international banking cartels, germany had jews registered and placed into seperate housing so they could not try to stage another revolution, they had already done it several times in germany with the spartan uprising and others, eventually even successfully overthrowing the government during the aforementioned german revolution of 1919. and then he had them put into work camps when even then they revolted violently. america did exactly the same thing, putting its ethnic japanese population in internment camps for fear of a rebellion within the country or acts of sabatoge or espianage, literally the same thing at the same time for the same reason. there were no gas chambers, they literally tell you the crematoriums are reconstructions at the death camps, because hitler “had them blown up”. there were crematoriums at the death camps, remember typhus was pandemic at the time, but the showers were just plain old showers. no jews were gassed whatsoever, an american doctor traveled to the death camps in poland (except they were work camps) and performed hundreds of autopsies, in an attempt to prove that people were gassed, he found not one single body had been gassed via cyanide out of over a hundred autopsies performed, they had died from typhus, basically got dysentary and shit themselves until they starved, it sucks but it was happening all over the world even in the pacific theater. and again the timeline for the burning of just the six million is beyond impossible and remember he supposedly killed 11 million total in his impossible deathcamps with its impossible ovens.

  I know this is hard to swallow, but you have to swallow it, because its fucking IMPOSSIBLE, you cant burn that many bodies in that amount of time, with the crematoriums they supposedly had, remember all of them are “reconstructions” built by the soviets after the war by their own admission, because hitler supposedly blew them all up. so when people say “have you been to the death camps because i have!” what they are really saying is, i saw the work camps and the crematoriums built after the war, and i was lead as part of a tour into a shower where i was told a spooky story that made me sad. its fake. it has to be fake or else the laws of physics are fake. you can call me a nazi if you want, but what does that mean? its only bad because the nazis killed millions based on their race, but im telling you they literally couldnt have, not how they say that they did. remember its illegal to say what im saying in most of europe, france germany many others, and people are currently in prison, for just questioning it! i do believe jews were killed in eastern europe by germans and others, but you have to understand they were angry for the jews had been killing gentiles for years, thats what the “red terror” was! and there were many massacres of european christians at the hands of communist jews. so some towns killed them as soon as their hegemony was broken. i dont think thats right, but find me a war where this kind of thing doesnt happen and ill give you ten bucks. that other impossible thing? never fucking happened it couldnt have. i could go on forever, but the fact is its not on me to prove it didnt happen, its on someone to prove that it did. remember witness testimony is pretty weak, and you cant convict based on that alone, and evidence of work camps isnt evidence of 6 million gassed and incinerated jews, that is an extraordinary (impossible) claim that requires extraordinary (IMPOSSIBLE) evidence.

[42inchtv]

Some Thoughts On The Best Movies Of 2019

Honorable Mentions: “Always Be My Maybe” (dir. Nahnatchka Khan), “Avengers: Endgame” (dirs. Joe and Anthony Russo), “Her Smell” (dir. Alex Ross Perry), “The Highwaymen” (dir. John Lee Hancock), “Joker” (dir. Todd Phillips), “Knives Out” (dir. Rian Johnson), “The Laundromat” (dir. Steven Soderbergh), “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese” (dir. Martin Scorsese), “Spider-Man: Far From Home” (dir. Jon Watts), “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” (dir. J.J. Abrams), “Toy Story 4″ (dir. Josh Cooley), “Triple Frontier” (dir. J.C. Chandor), “Under the Silver Lake” (dir. David Robert Mitchell), “Waves” (dir. Trey Edward Shults), “Yesterday” (dir. Danny Boyle)

10. “High Flying Bird” (dir. Steven Soderbergh) Steven Soderbergh loves process movies, films where collaboration has to take place in order to achieve a set goal. So, heists. Almost all of Soderbergh's movies have a heist element in the text -- often literally, as with the "Ocean's" franchise or "Logan Lucky"; sometimes deeper, as with "Magic Mike" or "High Flying Bird." This new Soderbergh joint is a fucking blast -- and right from the start, with Andre Holland rat-tat-tatting his way through a fancy lunch with an NBA rookie who's still wet behind the ears (Melvin Gregg, good stuff). On the face of it, "High Flying Bird" is a heist movie, one where we watch Holland's Ray and his dogged former assistant (Zazie Beetz) use shoe-leather to stop an NBA lockout and make themselves a lot of money in the process. But its deeper reading is about a disrupter trying to disrupt again without falling behind the curve (it might as well be about Soderbergh himself). The ideas presented in "High Flying Bird" are so modern its almost as if Soderbergh has seen the future, one where athletes democratize sports in the way so many other fields have been democratized by social media. The production and release of "High Flying Bird" -- it was shot on an iPhone and dropped on Netflix -- are timely too. Soderbergh continues to get over on all these guys, doing it better and faster than most people half his age. Maybe he loves heists so much because he's made a career out of pulling jobs on the unsuspecting for 30 years.

9. “Booksmart” (dir. Olivia Wilde) A classic right out of the box, even in spite of the ponderous discourse surrounding its release. “Booksmart” takes the one-crazy-night structure and core relationship of "Superbad" and mixes it with the heart and sincerity of "Lady Bird" to create a coming-of-age movie that transcends gender and time and finds room to turn Beanie Feldstein into a giant star. This is a god-level performance, paying off what everyone hoped would happen after she played the beta in "Lady Bird." She's the alpha here and tears the movie to shreds. Give her a goddamn Oscar.

8. “Parasite” (dir. Bong Joon Ho) There is always another bottom. “Parasite” starts as one kind of movie and becomes another and the deftness with which it transitions is but one of the many delights buried within what has become a landmark release. Two things to note, before hitting the next blurb: first, the ending montage is unforgettable, quite literally as I’ve often replayed it in my head during quieter moments; and second, the score is the best of the year.

7. “Little Women” (dir. Greta Gerwig) Bigger in scope and bolder in construction than “Lady Bird,” Gerwig’s adaptation of “Little Women” stamps her as one of the best filmmakers working today. No one is able to be as honest in depicting complicated human feelings and as unafraid to portray outright empathy amid conflict. The only downside to Gerwig hitting the rarefied air of an auteur is that she doesn’t seem to want to act anymore. But we’ll take the role switch if there are more movies like “Little Women” on the horizon.

6. “Marriage Story” (dir. Noah Baumbach) Noah Baumbach is never really mentioned when conversations turn to best directors; he’s always felt a tier behind the Tarantinos and Scorseses of the world. But given a second thought, it’s hard to imagine why. Baumbach has been knocking out four-star movies since the ‘90s and “Marriage Story” might be his best. (Thanks to Netflix, it’s also by far his most widely seen; my parents even watched this one.) The divorce drama turned meme generator is typical Baumbach: smart people arguing about life with a bite that doesn’t shy away from showing the underside of humanity. But it feels like his most complete film, a perfect marriage of his earlier cynical work and his buoyant Gerwig period. It goes without saying but let’s say it anyway: Adam Driver is remarkable in this one, giving the best performance of the year. But Scarlett Johansson matches him scene for scene, a reminder of the raw talent she displayed during the “Lost in Translation” years when she was basically Andruw Jones for actors.

5. “Hustlers” (dir. Lorene Scafaria) From the opening tracking shot -- an unbroken take that follows newbie Destiny (Constance Wu in her best performance yet) as she tries to scratch together some cash during her first night at the klerb -- Lorene Scafaria makes her case for a Scorseseian tribute previously done best by Paul Thomas Anderson. But “Hustlers” isn’t a mere riff on “Goodfellas” or “Boogie Nights,” it’s a Trojan horse packed tight with big statements on the long-lasting ramifications of the 2008 financial crisis, the bonds of true friendship, and the way parenthood literally changes the mind of a parent (”motherhood is a mental illness,” Jennifer Lopez’s Ramona says twice during the film, first with a laugh and then later with a tear). It all culminates with a finale that doubles as a punch in the gut, with a monologue delivered by Lopez that should replace Ben Affleck’s juicy dialogue from “The Town” for aspiring actors on YouTube. Through it all, Scafaria controls every frame and sequence with confidence and ease not portended even by her previous solid work. It’s some masterful stuff, as is the way she’s able to tease out powerful performances from her motley crew of actors: Cardi B (lol sure), Lizzo, Lili Reinhart, Keke Palmer, Wu, and, of course, J.Lo, who does Robert De Niro in “Goodfellas” better than anyone else who has tried since 1990.

4. “Us” (dir. Jordan Peele) Oh, hey, “Us” is awesome. A “Twilight Zone” riff mixed with a greatest hits of references (including but not limited to “Scream,” “Jaws,” “The Shining,” “Signs,” “Funny Games,” “The Cabin in the Woods,” and “C.H.U.D.”) that throws a bunch of big, lofty ideas into the batter. Chief among them: How the ruling class must be taken out by the disenfranchised and how the disenfranchised, after wresting power from that class, will not go quietly into the night. (Alternate take: Bury the unwoke person you were as a youth before they can come back and ruin your life.) It all works so well — thrilling and hilarious, often at the same time. Lupita Nyong’o is otherworldly here (best actress 2020) and Winston Duke does an outrageous Jordan Peele impression that should please dads everywhere. Highest praise: During a year when we celebrated the greatness of 1999 movies, “Us” would rank up there with the best of the lot.

3. “The Irishman” (dir. Martin Scorsese) I've never thought to cry while watching a Martin Scorsese movie. That's not the kind of filmmaker he has been previously -- and even the movies he's made that pack an emotional wallop do so with almost surgical precision. Perhaps he's getting softer in his old age, or maybe I am: on my third viewing of "The Irishman" (but really, let's call it what it is: "I Heard You Paint Houses"), I teared up on more than one occasion. The elephant in the room after its release became Peggy and the wrongly perceived lack of agency given to her character. But watching how her relationship with Frank unfolds from birth to death with so few words is the movie's greatest trick. The first time we see Peggy, as an infant, she casts her big eyes on dad; those same glances -- angry, heartbroken, disgusted, pitiful stares -- make up their entire relationship. Only once does Frank experience something similar: after he kills Hoffa (a 20-minute sequence that features little dialogue and no music; we stan), Frank is next shown watching from a church pew as Bill Bufalino gives away his daughter at the altar on her wedding day; it's an act of fatherly love and joy that he'll never experience, not after what he's done hours before. Frank knows it too; just look at his face. A fucking masterpiece from our greatest filmmaker.

2. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (dir. Quentin Tarantino) Speaking of masterpieces: “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is Quentin Tarantino’s best movie in 20 years and his most introspective ever; cinema’s former enfant terrible has finally grown up. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” grapples with what happens when masculinity runs its course and when one generation loses prominence to the next. But it’s also just super hilarious — filled with moments that are best described as lol. This is the best performance Leonardo DiCaprio has ever given. It’s a remarkable tight-rope walk: he's an actor playing a slightly worse actor who himself is giving a performance and then having to also give another performance as the actor he's playing? As his sidekick-slash-lifemate, Brad Pitt is so effortless that it's almost redundant to praise him. And while there are other delights to enjoy among the cast (Margaret Qualley, Julia “tha God” Butters), let’s highlight Margot Robbie: She finds such warmth and grace within Sharon Tate that it's hard not to leave the film feeling a tremendous amount of sadness and regret. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" might rewrite her history, but the real world did not. Unfortunately, this legend was never printed. But at least it exists in the movies.

1. “Uncut Gems” (dirs. Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie) What if the last 30 minutes of "Goodfellas" was actually 120 minutes and starred an all-time Adam Sandler, Mike Francesa, and Kevin Garnett, and prominently featured Billy Joel's "The Stranger"? The Safdie Brothers wrote and directed my fever dreams and it resulted in the best movie of 2019, 2018, 2017. This is a landmark; why bother writing anything else?

[attract-mode-collective]

Everything Just Looks Better On Film, Even Rotoscoped Pixel Animation

The above, which was originally seen over at mendelpalace, hails from 1982 and was produced by Mattel, to advertise the Intellivision on the big screen, which played alongside movie trailers.

The futuristic newscast showcases the games Space Battle, Night Stalker, Utopia, Tron Deadly Discs, Boxing, Tennis, Skiing, and Star Strike, according to the uploader. He also states…

“This is a digital transfer from my personal 35mm film. Compared to other similar videos of this trailer, this is a higher resolution video but the original film stock is a little dirtier and has more wear. This digital transfer has been left in its raw state and no effort has been made to clean it up.”

Man, it’s been a little while since the last game culture wrap-up hasn’t? So long that this wacky Photoshop depicting Governor Chris Christie (courtesy of Kotaku) could be considered old news, but am gonna post it anyway…

I feel silly even commenting on it, but given my interest in video game attire… yes, I know about Atari’s Speakerhat. And yes, we are indeed living in the darkest timeline…

Whereas here we have a photo from back when Atari still did things that mattered…

The libraryandarchivesofplay explains…

“During the 1970s, designers at Atari created a multi-sided arcade game kiosk that allowed people to play up to six different games simultaneously. This undated photograph of an Atari Theater Kiosk depicts one young gamer playing Gran Trak 10 with the steering wheel control, while other children to the left of the image are engaged in a two-player game. The Atari Theater Kiosk was a high-visibility arcade attraction in public locations, such as shopping malls or subway stations.”

Back to the news, I have a new source and it is the Hard Drive section of The Hard Times. It’s hard to pick my fave headline and accompanying story, among such gems as “Climate Scientists Warn That All Super Mario Levels Will Be Underwater by 2025”, “Help! I Can’t Get Past the Part in Dark Souls 3 Where My Wife Threatens to Take the Kids and Go”, and “This Guy Made a Fully Functioning Computer in Minecraft That Blocks @notch on Twitter”.

Though the very best one might have to be “Band Paid in Experience Can Now Perform Spin Attacks, Wear New Armor”…

I also can’t choose which piece from Tino Valentin I like more; this possessed PC Engine…

Or this cheeseburger with a GameCube inside…

Am also rather fond of Pablo Calahorra’s Nintendo papercraft..

It’s a safe bet that most of you have seen Leonardo Gutierrez’s Super Smash Bears by now, but just in case (via it8bit)…

Speaking of Samus, here she is enjoying a glass of wine, courtesy of Sarracenian…

I also can’t stop staring at this Splatoon gif by tanyopo…

Was reminded of the original’s existence, while doing research on a “thing” regarding notable books that cover video game art and culture; here we have a review of CREDIT 00 - I love game graphics, perhaps one of the very first of its kind, originally published in 2004. Oh, also, the review is in German…

Apparently Batsugun is getting a manga adaptation?! Looks very nice as well (via miki800)…

Hey, Lego versions of the ships from Ikagura (via shmups). Neat!

I thought i had posted this old video mag cover previously, but it was something similar, perhaps similar enough in most circumstances to pass on it. But cuz I’m gaga for Xevious (again via the aforementioned source)…

Exhibit B (from you know who)…

I cannot emphasize enough how big of a deal Xevious was back in the day. The same could also be said of another beloved shmup of mine, Gradius. And on that note, Jeremy Parish’s most recent entry of his most excellent NES Works (formerly known as Good Nintentions… a name that I still prefer, sorry) is all about the game that made me want a Nintendo Entertainment System back in the day, and not Super Mario Bros like for most other kids…

Speaking of the NES, and returning to the subject of gaming mags, it’s time for yet another one of Classic Gaming Quarterly’s deep dives, and this one might what everyone’s been waiting for: the very first issue of Nintendo Power…

Spoilers: of all the magazine surveys that Chris Alaimo has done thus far, this was the first and only one that I found myself bored, though it’s not his fault. Cuz, at the end of the day, Nintendo Power was more or less just a vehicle to promote Nintendo and nothing but (obviously), which means we’re not only getting just a one portion of the gaming world circa its publication (never-mind that Nintendo was the only portion at the time, to a certain extent).

So there’s not a whole to talk about, though Chris does what he can, and makes some interesting observations, like the crazy hours the Nintendo Game Counselors had to work and if Sylvester Stallone ever saw how he was portrayed in the NES version of Rambo 3 (and if so, what did he think).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; god bless old print MSX ads (via mendelpalace once again)…

Recently, gaijira  posted an oldie but goodie, which Eric originally shared back in the day, over at GameSetWatch. It’s of the Ika Drive from Invader! Squid Girl...

I still need to watch that show, cuz I still don’t know why the 32X attachment is regularly colored…

What I would do for a full sized version of the following. Which apparently, thus far, doesn’t include me just asking the source, who also apparently took it herself (hey, I’ve bene hella busy)…

Here’s something I saw some time ago, in a Slack channel that I’m a part of, but it was small so I never shared it. But thanks to arcadezen…

lunaticobscurity states “snk please make that tough-looking hair flip girl [from  King of Fighters ‘96] a character in kof xv”…

They should also add…

Been on a Jackie Chan kick as of late. Which might have been brought on by the Tekken kick I’ve also been on recently. Surely everyone knows the connection, but in case not (via mysterious0bob)…

When you graduated from high school or college, you probably received a year book, right? Which means you didn’t go to Hudson Soft’s school for video game design. Otherwise, you would have received the following, provided you graduated in 1991…

Hardcore Gaming 101 has the details. Basically, for their final project, students produced a game in which the player walks around the school and interacts with staff plus teachers. It also includes the various assignments that they had to make during class, worked into the “main game”, or so I’m assuming. Alas, details are a bit hazy and there isn’t even any footage, simply a slideshow; apparently technical limitations prevent any video from happening…

BTW, here’s what the class of 1995’s Graduation Album looks like, courtesy of videogamesdensetsu…

What happens when you machine translate a Famicom game? You get the following; crashcarnival has several other examples handy…

Speaking of the language barrier, I wonder if that’s why I haven’t seen anyone leave a comment on this image by francoisdourlen, regarding the fact that you can’t play Duck Hunt, at least with a NES Zapper, on a flat screen television…

Which piece of Sonic fan art screams “THE 90’S!!!” more; this illustration of the blue blur himself, by piroeoe…

Or this group shot  of the “bad boys” (and gal), by paperbeatsscissors…

Though there’s also this official illustration for that cancelled Saturn title, via a sticker set that came with some Austrian freeze pops, via sonicthehedgeblog (note how Sonic is where Shaq’s uniform, back when he was with the Orlando Magic)…

And on that note, it’s been a while since we saw what’s new over at The Most Famous Hedgeblog, right? Recent faves include this tender moment from Sonic’s origin story, via some manga published in 1991…

Robotnik sprouting Wolverine claws in the American comic, early into its run…

Sonic getting on Knuckles’s case in Sonic Advance 2…

Sonic getting down, again somewhere in Australia back in the day…

And Sonic giving Mario a hard time, back when they were frenemies…

Here we have pictures of a pigeon playing Phantasy Star Online, via… who else but… tinypigeonlord…

You know what they say about Doom, right (via gamefreaksnz)…

Remember that video I posted not too long ago, of folks playing Super Mario on a big ass, replica Famicom (plus Super Famicom) controller? Well here it is again, but this time with Mega Man (technically Rockman; via anthony10000000)…

As @NickPopovich states: “Man, this IKEA has got ALL the classics”...

And finally, my new fave PC-98 jam (here’s the previous one, for those who need a refresher; via radicalhelmet)…

Don’t forget: Attract Mode is now on Medium! There you can subscribe to keep up to date, as well as enjoy some “best of” content you might have missed the first time around, plus be spared of the technical issues that’s starting to overtake Tumblr.

[curtis-experience-blog]

Experience article #1

Before we begin --

Something among the many nothings I often think of is how a good number of advances in that or the other thing come about after such and such has long left the living. Is this true? I have no idea, and I don't have the ambition to find out if it's true. There are plenty of fun things to recite to ourselves, and as a result of propaganda, bias, and/or censorship, etc., we end up with various levels of comprehension, ignorance, and acceptance. I think how I want. Folks that want to do the same should go about that choice. You take all that stuff you're subjected to and figure out how it makes sense to you. Can I make sense of 2+2 and find an answer to the equation? Yes, on a good day. That concept is fairly certain, at least, for most things that I care to comprehend or show interest in. I'd like to underline: I don't go out of my way to spread misinformation. There are things like fact and opinion, and that's fantastic. The latter: funnily interpreted. Conversely, facts tend to stay the same. Then that's the purpose of the scientific method and all those learned people that seek the "Truth": to go and prove, whether out of curiosity or demand, that this, that, or the other thing make that thing do this thing, and the other things represented there do another thing, etc.

This paper's tone is heavily influenced by the writings of alchemists. This is gold before its purity has been restored; one half of natural gold. This is a passionate attempt to explain what exists without the means and devices and circumstances to extract any more of the Truth from within. So, there validity of happenings may be scrutinized. That is something that is unavoidable; however, a person who has lost their arm knows that their arm is no longer attached to their body. A portait of a blind person is drawn. A person inspecting it might not conclude they cannot see. Similarly, most organisms on this planet eat because they feel hunger. Parallels of these kinds present themselves everywhere. Specifically of the focus of this paper: it is something felt, not seen, and like hunger, there is no device to measure its sensation.*

All we can do is make use of the ~70 years we spend here. While the intent is to bring attention to a phenomenon that exists in nature, I can fully appreciate Their decision to ignore or dispel what is described below. There surely will be ramifications and much frustration felt in many groups when/if technology advances (if need be). On the bright side, there is no one out there that forces you to remember this stuff yet. I'm talking to you, Music Professors/Learned Professionals. Of course, there is always the reality that nothing spectacular happens from here on out. Either way, I'm not holding my breath. This thing can just sit here collecting dust, if that's the way it goes. What matters to me is that I took the time to write this out. Folks can take it or leave it as it is. Just know that Curtis experienced, documented, and offered his mentation on the matter. Need a name? Let's call it "pseudo-vocal science" for now.

Understanding the Full Potential of the Voice

   Understanding the full potential of the voice takes years to uncover. In this paper it will be attempted to both bring awareness to one's own voice and describe the complex, yet, simple theory of voice strength. Everything here is taken for granted as there are no research, documented experiences, or data available - period - to argue the finer points. Take what is written here as the understandings drawn from the shell of an idea from one person; no more, no less. There will be included some ideas for voice exercises to play with, though, the main focus herein is to contemplate a mysterious phenomenon that resides in each of our very bodies.

   It's called the Theory of Voice Strength. Each individual is born with their own unique voice, and additionally, there is an inherited strength-- voice strength (or voice energy) as well. It's uncertain whether the vocal chords themselves are the reason for the uniqueness of the sound of a person's voice or if it is result of the composition of their voice energy. It may very well be a combination of the two. It isn't too often you hear two voices that sound the same like those from younger twins, for instance. Previous generations typically have stronger voices because it was a necessity to have a strong voice to be heard across greater distances. In today's modern age, there are many reasons why humans don't require strong voices any longer, save for various industrial settings; a person is immersed in a noisy environment, and a fisherman comes to mind too. Instead of relying on our voices like the rest of the animal kingdom does, we have many technological devices to make our communications require much less effort, taking away any burden on our voices.

   Evolution is the observable change in organisms [usually] over long periods of time. As far as the observable change in human voices' power is concerned, it is more than apparent if one listens to older recordings. Now, maybe it isn't fair, but the disparity of voice strength between humans and those of animals in the "wild" is unmistakable. Without firsthand experience, it is hard to assert all tribes people surely have much stronger voices than your average city-going citizen. When there is not a necessity for biology to be loud, it simply stops putting in the effort. How else does one explain why change occurs in organisms than by surmising one thing or another was needed due to conditions in its environment; one thing or another was not needed because of the toll and demand on its parents' bodies versus quick, reliable maturation. Humans are quickly losing their voices!

   It is understood that our vocal folds grow as we age, thus, changing the deepness of its timbre. Voice strength is no different. From the time we are born to the time we are without life, the growth of this energy is constantly building from the force exerted on it: the desire or striving to be heard. Something that each one of us is familiar with is the wanting to sound "better." In what calibre this behavior manifests is purely a personalized matter. Parents, teachers, peers, those hard at hearing, coworkers-- "They need to hear," or "I want to be heard by," might ring true. These are the basic thoughts, at least, that drive our voices to extend out; and evolution has designed a tested and true device to do just that. Like the heart that which forever cycles the blood in our bodies, voice energy is always moving and compounding on itself by demand. In fact, sleep time may be the only time when it is not. It can only be speculated as to how the energy of the voice behaves during an unconscious period. Perhaps it does indeed accelerate, encouraged to do so from the nature of the dreams we have. So, then from this natural growth to what all this looks like.

The first three images are of (from left to right):The essentially spherical nature of voice energy and two images depicting one of the more common patterns that voice energy makes.

The two pairs of images on the far right are of (from top to bottom): Force exerted outward from below the jaw and the corresponding place an airy sensation is felt in the larynx to its right, leading to a great increase of voice energy, and its opposite counterpart, leading to a great decrease in voice energy.

   You are not seeing anything, really. The energy of the voice is obviously not seen but felt. It can be thought of as a large orb around the throat area in its entirety. When put into motion by force, the effects of its energy rotating or growing may be perceived in a limited way. "Waves of growth" is what the behavior of the patterns of the voice energy is called. Above there is illustrated a single fragment of a single piece of a common pattern that voice energy adheres to. It is impossible to record how complex the waves of growth are, and it will likely not ever be possible to properly document how they begin. The most anyone can do is feel them when and how they are felt. Plainly speaking, waves of growth are only perceivable when significant force is placed on the energy of the voice. This 'force' is not to be mistaken as yelling. Rather, it is usually, though not limited to, being felt from the intentional use of voice for a sustained period. One such way is to try to create a moderately high pitch and hold the note very firmly. A sort of pressure in the chest may present amidst any number of other sensations, and even noticeable aftereffects on the whole sound of the user's voice is possible. Examples are enhanced vocal fry, changes to resonance, more difficulty or ease to project the voice out. In any case, expect change when subjecting the voice to strenuous activity. Singers are probably the most aware of the changes in their voice because of certain waves of growth that directly affect the accessibility of their "established" vocal range. It should be noted: When any trait in quality of voice appears during or after any exercising, it is solely the fault of the waves of growth and the state that they've reached.

   There is perhaps some truth to 'warming' up the vocal folds; however, states of the voice are things that are ever present and immensely affect one's performance. Make note of how it is impossible to maintain the way your voice sounds at the time you wake up. That is a state. It is surmised that when one comes out of unconsciousness, they are subjected to a state vocal energy settles to. The sound your voice makes at this time is as if it were completely relaxed before transforming, readying itself for use. There are times when vocal fry is harsher or more easily accessed. That is a state. Just the same: after one has exercised or has spoken loudly for a time. These are all states that the voice goes through. It is continually added onto and built and transformed since the very materialization of his/her vocal folds.** It is both necessary and can be very frustrating, especially for a singer, for the states of the voice can only be manipulated so much. Remember: the states of this energy are formed inside the whole "orb" of a person's voice energy. The bigger the orb, the more densely packed the waves of growth are, leading to much longerlasting states. Vocal exercises are proven to work because the force transforms the state into one that is more appropriate for pitch ascent and descent. Beyond this, it is ignorant of wants because it is a natural construct - built to last, and not particularly for the purpose of maintaining a wide vocal range indefinitely. Once the overall orb of voice energy has been sufficiently packed so densely by the waves of growth, its state must change. For music appreciators, this happening is most often witnessed in the recordings of groups where the lead singer makes use of a gradually decreasing vocal range over the span of their career.

   In the illustration above there is reference to airy sensations felt in the larynx region when a technique is used to force voice energy to accelerate its growth. The sensation itself is airy, though, it is also so condensed to feel sharp as it rises up. It is not pain. It, also, is not felt in the actual tissue of the larynx but to the left or to its right. To explain this behavior, one may need to fully comprehend the true shapes of the waves of growth in their most rudimentary stages. Until technology has developed to the point where it can measure voice strength and more, we can only guess at the hidden equation that makes it all work. Keep in mind: the one technique known to experience this for one's self comes with significant weight. While it is possible to very quickly "grow" the voice, the potential to weaken it is apparent too. All that can be told of this technique will be available in the following section of this paper.

   We've now explored all the new relevant information for the theory of voice strength. Complete technological reliance may not cause biology to do away completely with our voices. The voice, in all probability, will likely merely become the next appendix; worst case scenario. Surely, when the people of human civilization find more confidence in their voices through understanding and the knowledge that this golden age can bring, they will make even the animal kingdom envious. From then on, expect voices as strong and stronger than the vehicles they operate. This is one prospective future mankind has. Although there is so much to learn, the fundamentals of communication is inspired by, first, discovery, and then change.

Technique and some theory

   So, basically, the theory behind why this works is that as with the states talked about earlier, a particular state is required from the energy of the voice to allow it to "skip." There is no way to actually know how strong one's voice must be before this technique is possible to perform. All I know is that it took about seven years of singing before the question of what might be possible came to mind. I specify how long it was because it is known that a certain voice strength is needed. Whether it was possible at an earlier time is completely up in the air; though, I am skeptical to believe I could have done it much sooner, given the way my voice had begun to behave in months preceding success. So, yes, there are a couple prerequisites. Among the words I use as terminology, "critical mass" seems to work well with labeling the moment when rapidly accelerating the growth of the voice can be done.

   To go about readying your voice you'll need to practice glottal stops while making an uh. I recommend listening to music, uttering to the beat or however it works well for you. Do this for upwards of two hours. Though I have no evidence to support the claim, I do believe it does take some time for the state to come about. You think about how long it takes to "warm up" in vocal exercises to advance the energy so much. An hour may be the minimal time invested. All that is up in the air. Keep in mind: the purpose of these grunts, if you will, isn't to do them haphazardly. You must be trying to make each uniform and the same in every way. You must pay close attention to how it feels when you're doing this too. If they feel different from one to the next, I suspect that is an indicator that the voice isn't strong enough. Furthermore, the purpose of the glottal stops is to have a place to focus on and compare. My vocal experimentation had been going on for about a month with the grunting. Additionally, I found it very helpful to hear the singing of my favourite singers as I was doing this. It served as the catalyst for my epiphany: to try to push the sound of the glottal stop out. It was from hearing the "impact," for lack of a better word, during their singing that made me wonder if the answer was so simple. It was, honestly, the next day after the thought came to mind that I tried to do this and succeeded. It pretty well just feels like your voice skips out from your mouth, along with the sharp, airy type feeling rising up the right side of the larynx.

   I want to go over how I think you avoid weakening your voice too. Essentially, you just talk (and/or sing) like normal. Don't let the waves of growth or abrupt change of states make you think you need to change anything in the focus of your speech. I found they really confused me when I was feeling them. For instance, there seemed to be a sort of sweet spot that you reach just a little ways up to during the technique. Of course, I'm not talking about pitch. That led me to try to speak that way; to try to achieve that same spot during regular speech. The best advice I can give is: don't do that. Talk regularly and save the change in focus for when you're out exercising, if you do this at all.

   You know, I'll admit, I do have the worry that there will be those that are successful, and then succumb to weakening their voices. Whether it's on purpose or accident, it really doesn't matter. The bottom line is: the effects are permanent; or they'd may as well be seen that way. The rapid development of voice energy you experienced while you were in the womb is not possible once you're out and about. You can expect to never be able to recover the power you once had. So, don't fool around. This technique is basically like taking nature in your hands and modifying it at will. It's not something to take lightly.

Q & A

Q: I've been yelling like you said and nothing is happening. What am I doing wrong?

A: There is no yelling involved in any of this. People have been yelling with all their hearts for centuries. Don't expect anything miraculous to happen doing that.

Q: What does all this mean?

A: This paper explains why some people are naturally louder than others (not just loud personalities), why many people that try to sing, can't, and by extension, why voices change the way they do as we age.

Q: Can anyone do this?

A: I don't know. Probably.

Q: Are you sure you're not just the only person in the world with this ability to make your voice louder?

A: While that's a cute thought, I do have the suspicion that someone somewhere has accidentally done it.

Q: Why are you posting this on Tumblr instead of to a peer-review what'cha-ma-call-it place?

A: Because this is part of my thoughts and experience program. Besides, would you take a submission like this completely unscientific, completely lacking data and evidence with bad grammar paper as anything more than some crazy shenanigans?

A: Please don't answer a question with another question.

Q: Is this meant to be serious?

A: Yes. It was my intent to write out what I've come to understand (as rationally as possible) after experiencing what I have with voice experimentation.

Q: How does this affect me?

A: Think about it like driving a car. You don't know how the car works, but it drives around just the same. ut if you want to be able to understand how the car works, you'll read about it.

Q: Do you believe in ghosts?

A: Kind of, I guess. I don't really care. If they exist, then that's good for them.

Q: What are your thoughts on measuring voice strength?

A: I have a couple ideas. My first idea was using burps, as ridiculous as that sounds. The issue being that no burp is the same as another. Not to mention you can push a burp out with the abdomen. The second idea is vocalizing while inhaling. There's only so much anyone can do to force air in and vocalize at the same time, so it's fairly sure to give okay results. The disparity in voice strengths might be noticeable for someone hearing for it. Under these circumstances it is unmistakable.

Q: If this picks up and lots of singers begin to take advantage of this, what do you think would happen?

A: Well, that would be up to them. There might be those that want to have voices stronger than a jet engine. Others might be satisfied with just not needing a mic any more. I can't help but wonder what it feels like to have a voice (as modest as it sounds) as strong as an elephant or other large animal. I'm sure it feels unreal, especially when the strength of a regular voice feels pretty cool by itself.

*There may be a device to measure the sensation of hunger

** Probably

9.9 experience out of 10 experience points.

[santamonicayachtclub]

on curation, validation, and prioritization in fandom

Fandom is legion.

None of us “do” fandom the same way as everyone else, and none of us get all the same things out of it as everyone else. It’s okay to listen to discussions and not partake. It’s okay if fandom is a place for you to decompress and take time for yourself. It’s just as valid to view diversity analysis as your fandom calling as it is to view drawing fanart as your fandom calling. It’s okay to not feel comfortable participating in certain parts of fandom. It’s okay to have a finite amount of energy. Something to bear in mind is that this probably indicates you also lack the energy to complain about negativity and, in effect, contribute to it yourself. This is what it means to curate your experience. Preserving your energy and your need for self-care is never invalid, but neither should it occur as a result of cutting down others. If you’ve noticed yourself finding certain topics uncomfortable or frustrating, this might be a good opportunity to examine why POC and LGBT+ fans discussing GMM from a social justice perspective makes you feel that way. Bottom line, no one is being forced to perform fandom to anyone’s specifications. Cultivating your own experience need not occur at the expense of putting down people who engage with fandom differently than you.

And I will say...I've been here a little over a month and most of the time I have no idea who anyone is talking about. I work with immigrant families full time and have a side hustle doing ESL tutoring and am lowkey trying to keep up with my book club and get some academic stuff published without popping a vein. I have no idea who the original post was about or who wrote what fic with what thing that’s possibly objectionable. I’m just here to be America’s Next Top Model.

On that note, I realize the hoary old chestnut that is the “depiction isn't endorsement” argument has been thoroughly cracked open several times, I really do. Exploring gritty, uncomfortable topics is something people do in every realm of media, and by no means indicates a creator’s desire to partake in the same subject matter in reality. Creation is fueled by everything from escapism to therapeutic expression to sublimation of emotion to just plain curiosity. 

There's merit to the concept of self-curation, but it also involves work on both ends. Creators have been stepping up their tagging game considerably in recent years, and there’s been an uptick in author’s notes that allow readers to click to the end of a fic and read detailed synopses of potentially triggering contents. Fanvid makers have been doing the same, which allows viewers to skip over certain segments of their vids. In many ways, fandom has been making great strides towards protecting its participants. On the other hand, there will always be creators who opt not to engage in these practices, just as there will always be fanworks that repel certain fans. Tailoring your dash by blocking and unfollowing won't stop these works from being posted or their creators’ accounts from existing. Plenty of fanwork creators use their works to sublimate trauma or mental illness or to explore the deconstruction of tropes typically considered trite or problematic. Saying this work shouldn't exist full stop is concerning and often leads down the slippery slope of implying authors should be obligated to divulge personal information in order to prove they have the right “credentials” to be writing certain subjects.

Continuing along that topic, it’s impossible to know for certain the mental illnesses, survivor statuses, and ethnic background of every other person in fandom, let alone how those things might manifest or how each individual person might cope with them. It’s concerning to me that there’s been a spike in individual fans declaring in very broad strokes which fanworks pass muster and which should be scrubbed from existence, based on their own status as a member of a given group. There are certainly occasions where this is valid and necessary (e.g., calling out a fanwork that is blatantly racist or transphobic) There are also occasions where such declarations set up a false dichotomy in which there’s a right way and a wrong way to “do” fandom if you are a member of this group, whether it be one’s status as a POC, a sexual assault survivor, LGBT+, etc. This is erasure of those who share the same trait(s) but have a completely different perspective.

POC, survivors, LGBT+, and mentally ill fans all have and are continuing to both consume and create problematic things. Many of them may not feel comfortable disclosing personal information online for a variety of reasons. Someone repulsed by BDSM fic might have a weakness for daddy kink. Someone might view a given fic's content as gratuitous while another person might see it as nuanced and sensitively portrayed. There are few absolutes in fandom and trying to force them into existence is a headache waiting to happen.

Trying to stop the existence of every fanwork you find problematic will leave you exhausted, frustrated, and burned out. For every person crusading against XYZ, there will always be another person transforming into a “challenge accepted” meme circa 2010 and eagerly producing more XYZ. That isn’t to say there’s no conversation to be had about the portrayal and treatment of certain tropes and concepts in fandom, because there absolutely is. At the same time, there has to be a moment where you realize, however difficult it may be, that sometimes it’s necessary to take a step back and protect yourself.

If you’re unsure about clicking on a read more tag to see someone’s art or clicking on a fic that hasn’t been tagged specifically enough for your comfort, send the creator a message asking about the content. This can be anxiety-inducing, so an alternative is to have a vetting squad, a group of trusted friends you can turn to and ask, "hey, does anyone know if SassySweaterRhett’s fic contains D/s?" or "I just got added by chinchillinwithchase, does anyone know what kind of stuff they post?" If you notice a fic with minimal tags that the author has labeled Choose Not To Warn, maybe post a quick "hey, has anyone read this and if so what can I expect?" to your blog before clicking on it.

Fandom will never be a tailor-made safe space for everyone who enters it. But we can try to promote consistency. When in doubt, using too many tags is often better than using too few. Knowing your own limits can be a tedious process that often involves stumbling across content you immediately wish you hadn’t. My own triggers and squicks are almost all atypical and not likely to be covered by anyone's tags. I’ve had a number of rude awakenings, the vast majority of them from back in the day when it was considered courteous if you included content warnings at all.

That said.

It is so, so hard to try and make a space for yourself and your unique voice in fandom only to then be told fandom doesn’t want to hear it. As I said earlier, curation works both ways. One person’s expression is as valid as any other’s unless hate speech, abuse, doxxing, etc. enter the picture. And to be honest, some of the anon messages I’ve seen lately have veered pretty unequivocally over the line. Attacking someone for expressing an opinion by telling them to die or kill themself is never, ever appropriate no matter how much you disagree with what they're posting. This is a great example of when it might behoove one to add a few new terms to one’s blacklist and practice the gentle art of not being an asshole. Dialogue, discussion, and even arguments are bound to happen, and should happen in any venue that involves a a group of people with shared interests but not a shared brain. There is no reason it should ever devolve into personal attacks.

tl:dr Fandom is a tangled web when it comes to trying to walk the tightrope between self-expression and self-preservation and it would be great if we could figure it out.