#i believe all authors and creators are entitled to write stories however they want

[rosysins]

♣ Gekkouin.

As a bird demon, I think Gekkouin has a lot more potential that Kagami didn't explore before kind of pushing him to the side(?). When I saw the chapter where Gekkouin was fighting with the other Shinoa Squad's black demons, he only used very generic attacks that seems to be any attacks that demons could use? Which personally feels like a waste, considering Kiseki-o and Asuramaru were able to exercise their own powers during the fight against Yuu.

I think it would've been cool if he made use of more bird-themed abilities, like even something as simple as using his wings to throw Yuu off-balance during the fight would've pose some form of challenge. After all, even the most formidable swordsmen would waver if they loose their footing.

Also, a rlly cool ability i read somewhere, like a peacock's shrill? or peacock cry? An ability that agitates or grabs the opponents' attention, thereby limiting their ability to tunnel vision?? LIKE THATS SUPER COOL and could've made Gekk so much cooler?? I mean, yeah he would still get beat up but at least it goes to show that the black demons aren't exactly weak either??

Like yes, he is a side character and yes, he probably shouldn't be 'invested' in so much. But if a side character doesnt prove any sort of challenge or support to the main character, then he might as well not be there in the first place.

[archduk-e]

An attempt to investigate and explain fandoms and headcannons thorough Orientalism

Recently I started reading Orientalism (in short - a book on how the West saw and created the narrative of the Orient more than 100 years ago) and suddenly had a bit of a realisation. The author, Edward W. Said, mentioned how an important aspect of Orientalism was the fact that firstly, it fascinated the westerners because they already felt a certain (superior) way about that territory due to their history with it and the colonial past related to it, and secondly, the Orient was incapable of resisting being fantasised and thought about.

Anyways, I think I saw a link between this and what I and many other people do on the Internet with fandom characters and celebrities (which by the way isn’t as common as we think outside of websites like this). I must also add that my points of reference for this text are (ironically) my own fandoms and communities and what I see and do in them. This post will likely reach no one, but even if that won’t be the case, take all of this with a grain of salt as I am also very biased in my data sources.

I believe that just as with the western ideas of Orientalism there are 3 important factors that enable us to photoshop pictures of grown men and add glitter and bowties to their hair (not that it’s not cute and funny of course)

1. Personal Creative Empowerment

There already exists a certain attitude towards what we call “headcannons” - we know everyone has them! However, what we forget is that it wasn’t always likely the case. Unlike 100 years ago anyone today is at complete liberty to create any art, fiction or similar, at their own pace and in their own places. We feel empowered and capable of creating and publishing any art and any stories, and we always take a moment to imagine something in situations where someone from 100 years ago (or pre internet) wouldn’t have taken the time to. AO3, fanfiction.net, Tumblr - all of these places house many small creators, who upload silly art, romantic and cute stories, write these “POWs” and interact with other fans about their chosen fandoms. This removes the elitism from these communities and makes everyone who visits such websites think “hey… I can create and upload my silly tv-show art too! just like [this creator] and [that creator]!”. It is a very positive and empowering concept, and it creates a much less limited environment that allows us to share content and amplify the made-up and non-existent narratives we create for our own comfort and amusement.

2. Honest Internal Fascination

Our fantastical and sometimes concerning thoughts and ideas about characters, people and fandoms all relate to things we find inherently fascinating ourselves. Whether it be a WW2 era movie, or a fantasy game, or a documentary, we always talk about, draw and write about things (and aspects of things) we ourselves are connected to beforehand. We find a character who we feel personally connected to in some way, an idea which resonates with us on a deeper level, or a general concept of being someone else somewhere else and being able to do things we cannot do right now.

3. Power(less)fullness and Entitlement

Most importantly, we feel entitled to produce these pieces of content and “yap” about these things because neither the made up non-existent movie characters, nor the very much real but distant actors and personalities can not resist or in any way inhibit (stop or resist) our creative eruptions. They are powerless and helpless against our metaphorical imaginative offence, and find no way to express their own thoughts on the matter, making us feel even more entitled and empowered than we previously would have been. It also notably enables us to twist and shape these characters ideas or people into whatever we want - give them any traits they originally didn’t possess or assume their behaviour in situations. The terms “yassification” and “babygirl” come to mind, often made to relate to characters who didn’t show any such behaviour in the actual piece of media. The oversimplification of motives and traits also stems from this empowerment, allowing us to make anyone into anyone, just for our own psychological comfort and amusement.

~~~

Now indeed, just as with Orientalism, the most evident reason behind our actions is also true and honest fascination and interest (sometimes even love) - we don’t have a monetary or political motive behind our actions (in some cases however this isn’t necessarily true), we are simply drawn to these things due to our very real emotions and feelings. However I do believe that without the aforementioned 3 factors there would be much less “fangirling”, Tumblr posts about characters, and discord servers discussing how literal war officers from a popular movie would behave in an aqua park (real example).

I want to finish this by saying that I personally find nothing bad in this behaviour - indeed I display it myself (look at my posts and you’ll get it). I do however find it infinitely interesting.

[minisoysquares]

As fun as the events and ideas you posted about 19days would be, wouldn’t it also just bring in more negative stuff - like fandom in general has become a field of land mines and I fear that something that’s supposed to fun will turn into some sort of battle. Like how some people get extremely heated over any other ships outside of their fave ship and they cannot possibly have other ships except theirs, etc. The last thing anyone wants is for content creators to be targeted simply for making something they thought would be fun

(This ask and answer is about this post.)

First of all thank you so much for addressing such a big and valid concern. I agree that that has indeed happened in certain fandoms - I can say I've been in the thick of it and witnessed quite the warfare - but in others it has also brought fans and readers and content creators together even closer and tighter in a wonderful thriving community.

I have the feeling this'll get quite long so please proceed under the cut with that in mind.

I believe all things are potential harbingers of both discord and harmony. There will always be people who feel entitled and who want - even demand! the audacity! - authors and artists to create for their ships and their ships alone. And there will also always be people who can appreciate the writing and the art without judgemental treatment regarding the pairings/characters depicted, no matter their preferences.

All of that happens and will continue to happen, whether we go forward with these events or not. And yet authors will still write what they want to write, artists will still draw what they want to draw, graphic designers will still make the edits they want to make as well. What we could do, in this small and close knit fandom, is take in our hands this powerful rich opportunity and try our best to make a model of positivity out of it.

In these events, there would be no bashing or shaming allowed. The content created would be to be enjoyed by those who are attracted to it, and those who do not have a taste for that fanwork in particular would be asked to remain respectful. (As it should always be.) There would be no ship wars in these spaces. Discourse, hate-speech or anti-behaviour would not be tolerated by the moderators of the event.

Creators who indulged in it would be immediately disqualified. Any unnecessary commentary or complaints from the audience would be deleted and reported as spam. Anyone instigating conflict would be only painting a target on their back, really. Because most of us - I dare say - are only here to appreciate the brilliant artwork and fanfiction woven and crafted by the talented people who share it with us.

If it came to it and it escalated, this hellsite has several tools that can be put to use to that regard. Accounts could be blocked and/or even reported. They wouldn't be able to interact with the blogs created to run these events from then on. We would be able to create a black list and post it publicly so everyone else who wished to could simply block those unruly pesky accounts and remain at peace and free to enjoy themselves to their utmost.

Let us not forget that this is all fiction and it's all for fun. Everyone's allowed to have their own opinion, likes and dislikes. There simply is no need to step on anyone else and their interests to elevate them.

Let's exemplify, for the sake of clarity:

Do I personally ship A with B? Imagine I do not. I do not search for it. If I come across it? I scroll past it. Once or twice, I may even like - and even reblog - if it happens to catch my attention and it's well written/drawn! (I have tags along the lines of 'I don't ship it but' and 'look at this beautiful art' or 'drown in the power of these words.')

It's so easy to interact amongst ourselves without coming with pitchforks at one another. Know what actually needs effort? Being a meanie and a party popper! Who in their right mind wastes their time on things they don't care for? Dum dums, that's who! Of course, we're all dummies at times... and that's okay! Let's just not harass people or crash their fun while we're at it!

If nothing else: you wouldn't like if others did this or that to you, therefore don't do it to others. It's a simple concept to grasp.

Very important: in these events, every single piece would be explicitly and properly tagged and warned for right at the very top of each post, so there would be absolutely no excuses for anyone being nasty.

We would just have to be open to the experience. Enjoy our ships and let other enjoy theirs. We do not have to all like the same thing. That would be just boring. But we can cohabitate devoid of trouble in fandom. Each one of us just has to be respectful. No need to even be nice. No one has to compliment something they don't like. They also don't have to step on what others do.

Don't like a ship/character/theme? Don't read stories focused on it. Don't put down authors who write it or readers who enjoy it. Same for art. No need to shout about how awful it is just for the simple reason that it does not fit into your personal shipping preferences. It can still be still be a tasty and wonderfully baked cake, it's just that you're not fond of vanilla or strawberries. It's okay. There are all kinds of cake for everyone's tastes!

Further examples: If a ship happens to be a NOTP for me or I don't care for the character(s)? I filter the tags. All of them. Any and every tag I can think of. It's very easy to protect ourselves on Tumblr from content we do not wish to see. (My own list is huge and just as effective.) Filtering is incredibly important.

So go ahead and filter out the ships you can do without! Filter out porte-manteaux like Tianshan, Zhanyi, Qiucheng, Tianxi, Tianyi, Lishan, Litian, Liyi, Shantou, Polydays, (...) Filter out any ship tag that doesn't strike your fancy like Q x MGS, HC x JY's mom, (...) Filter out characters that aren't your cuppa tea like HT, HT's dad, SL, JY's mom, XH, (...)

Make it safe for yourself and for others. That way you won't rage at the sight of your NOTP, won't feel the compulsive need to trash the people who ship it, no one is hurt and everyone is happy!

There are many steps we could follow to prevent rotten eggs in our coop. And many more actions we could take to throw them out if need be. I firmly believe, however, that if we're all of the same mind everything would go well and with very few bumps along the way.

If we only ever feared the possible negative consequences of our actions, never taking the risk for the possible positive ones, we'd never get anything done. I say let's not let our beloved fandom stagnate or dry out. Let's incentivate and motivate and inspire! Let's share! Let's have fun!

Think of it in these terms: it wouldn't be a competition at all but rather a charity event. Performers and spectators coming together for a common good, raising content and spreading joy! There would be no winners or losers or prizes. What would matter would be good old-fashioned participation, both by providing content and/or consuming it.

It could also a good way to get people to express themselves more. Many content consumers tend to lurk or keep to themselves even if they like the content posts. (I used to be one myself and only a couple months ago started to come out of my shell.) I myself advocate for reblogging instead of liking - if you have to choose one or the other, I mean, why not do both? - and leaving a word on every single post I like and/or reblog. Sometimes I go nuts commenting, sometimes I leave a small note in the tags.

It doesn't matter how. Even if you're shy or introverted (*raises hand*) or don't know what to say I guarantee a single emoticon or a string of disordered letters symbolising incoherence will make the creator's day all the same. Getting feedback is so important and motivational for creators and also a great way for fandom members to keep in touch and support each other.

Additionally, if a person would like more of a certain type of content here are some healthy actions they could take: a) commission a creator and pay for it if they can; b) politely make a suggestion to a creator with an open ask box; c) post a prompt publicly for possible interested creators to use; d) do it yourself and share it with others!

This turned out into more of a "behavioural guidelines" thing than I'd have liked. I am not in any way whatsoever telling anyone what to do. This is what I do, and it works wonders for me. I stay completely out of toxic arguments and in on all the goodies. I'm able to fully enjoy my fandoms. And isn't that what we all want?

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me. And I apologise for the long rant!

Of course, this is only my personal stance on the issue. I did go for a survey first exactly for this end, to get their opinions on the subject and see if it would be worth a shot. I shall hope many other people will think as I do, but I will wholly respect those who don't.

[phynali]

more spn discussions, just skip this post y’all

 @queerbluebird​ thanks so much for engaging with my post/reply! i really enjoyed reading your response and i have a long reply here.

i’m responding to your post/reply here rather than reblogging it because honestly that thread is - so long. so very long. 

so first - 

i agree there is a difference between entitlement and what i would call, not promise, but instead “narrative follow-through”. A story that completely lacks narrative follow-through does end up feeling disappointing, or frustrating, or rage-inducing, depending on what’s happened. to me there’s a fundamental difference between critiquing a story based on follow-through and bad storytelling (which your post aims to do), versus say, creating hashtag campaigns about a character being silenced because and spreading conspiracy theories about a bad dub (among other things honestly).

and also - queerbaiting totally sucks, we definitely do agree on that.

where we disagree, i think are these two core points:

i do not see the narrative build-up that demands a follow-through. i do not see supernatural as having built up to the story that many destiel shippers seem to think was there, and no one has ever been able to point out to me any actual textual reasons that do craft that narrative build-up  

i fundamentally do not believe that destiel was ever a queerbait. queerbait involves active intent on the part of creators to tease a ship or queer representation in order to draw in $ from queer audiences without ever making it canon, so as not to alienate straight audiences. so, refering to point 1., i do not see the canon text as having laid the groundwork for a queerbait and those romantic tropes, at least not at any point in the past 7 years. and beyond the canon, the writers and producers and jensen ackles all indicated dean was straight, and that they were not writing a romance. if anyone queerbaited the fans, it was misha collins who kept teasing the possibility, and personally i would argue that was irresponsible of him. but that’s a different discussion altogether and tends to piss people off when it’s framed as such, because misha means a lot to them and it hurts to see the man who validated their feelings get criticized for the manner in which he validated them. so i’m gonna leave that aside.

beyond that, I want to engage with some of your specific quotes:

Supernatural loves to say “wait for it.” And I don’t think it’s entitled to feel betrayed if an author uses their story to say “wait for it” in order to convince you to stick with their story and then delivers the opposite after you do.

May i ask, where was the “wait for it” with destiel? this ties in directly to the queerbaiting. i indicated in my post/reply that while i see it from cas, there’s been little to no hint of any reciprocation of feelings from dean, and if anything the past 7 or so years have driven the point home that it isn’t happening. i personally am not able to see the “Wait for it” and that was the point of my question. without the “Wait for it”, i also can’t see the queerbait. 

I asked for specifics and while i totally get not having the spoons, you provided a few:

(off the top of my head for Dean though, the mixtape, his response to Cas’ death at the end of 12, subsequent grief arc, and reaction to Cas’ return in the front half of 13 rank highly. His reaction to Lucifer’s prank call in 15x19 might rate, but maybe just because it’s so recent.)

not trying to be unkind here, but i quite genuinely don’t see any of these examples as framing cas and dean in a romantic light, or as hinting at a “what if”. the mixtape is like.... okay, maybe. i had read that as being symbolic of something else, but i can see wanting to read it from a shipping lens. (i don’t however think i’d read it as baiting or “what if” - it was quite textually not framed that way. shipping, 100%, but canon build-up, not for me).

for the other examples -- grieving for someone you consider family? and being happy when they come back? that’s not shippy to me. i mean - contrast the grief he showed over cas’s death compared to his grief over, say, mary? or, less extreme, charlie? and nothing compared to how off the rails he goes when sam is dead or he thinks sam is. so i -- i just can’t see those as creating a narrative that demands a follow-through. and when your friend who is dead calls your phone? of course you hop to the door - i don’t know what is romantic about that. sam would’ve hopped just as quick if “cass” had called his phone instead.

and look - i see what is fun to ship about all that. if i shipped it, i’d be happily collecting these moments with a smile and grinning to myself about how cute they are and much they mean. but shipping it vs. it being romantically framed in the canon are two fundamentally different things. shipping doesn’t imply narrative buy-in or deliberation from the creator.

moving on, you also spoke at length about 15x18:

15x18 made the sort of statement that drew back even people who did exactly what OP said they should do, turning off the TV years ago. It wasn’t a quiet “if you’re still watching, keep waiting,” so much as a shouted “hey we’re gonna do this thing, watch this!”

i guess destiel fans vs. those of us who don’t ship it really see this as fundamentally different. because you discuss that moment as one which requires follow-through, and say that if this were heteronormative m/f love declaration, there would be that expectation of follow-through. not necessarily reciprocity, but more - more conversation, more acknowledgment, more something.

(i mean - if there was more, but that more was “hey i love you too but only platonically, sorry man” would that be better?)

but no - i actually just... disagree with your point on that front. i can see why you feel the way you do and i acknowledge that it can be read as the start of a conversation. to me though -- and clearly, now that the finale is out, how the writers saw it -- that was actually the end of a conversation. the end of, like you pointed out, 12 years. a 12-year conversation that ends in a gorgeous declaration of love, and specifically how love isn’t about being together, it’s simply about being - it’s about the fact that you love someone, and that feeling alone is the most beautiful thing in existence.

to me, that declaration can only be written and interpreted as an ending.  a sacrifice, a declaration, and a goodbye. so - while i kind of expected seeing more people in episode 20 and realize that didn’t happen largely due to covid - i’m not disappointed we didn’t see cas, because that culmination of his narrative (and then knowing he was with jack, after, rebuilding the heaven that he rebelled against and finally completing his narrative circle by fixing all the problems with it alongside the good god he sought to find all along) is kind of perfect. 

and i genuinely don’t think if cas was in a female vessel this entire time that that would change. maybe some audience members would feel differently, but i think many of us would see it for the end it was nonetheless. there’s plenty of stories with m/f ships that are one-sided and that character sacrifices themselves for the person they love, so i don’t see why this would be any different (except the bury your gays issue, but that’s a whole other and very real conversation about media tropes).

moving on to the series finale.

As many people have pointed out in praise of 15x20, Sam is the absolute most important thing in Dean’s life, his priority above anything and everything… And yet there, at the actual end of the world, Dean ignores Sam’s call and instead cries over the loss of Castiel. Dean’s loss of Castiel plays in tandem with the loss of literally the whole world. But we’re not to take that as a promise that Castiel means more to this story, or to Dean, than a couple seconds of wistfulness after the dust settles?

I... yeah. i don’t see what this even is arguing. that dean taking a minute to himself to grieve his best friend, who just died in part because dean decided to go hunt down billie (who was literally dying anyway). he’s hurting. there’s nothing about this that’s a promise - it’s an end. it’s grief. it’s the horror of losing someone you care about, and the silence that comes after. it’s fundamentally human in it’s pain. and we, the audience, are invited to grieve with dean.

so I mean - of course cas means more to this story. of course he’s meant more than a few seconds of grief, after 12 years. but just because that’s the last time we see him on screen doesn’t mean we don’t value his story, and celebrate how it too came full circle.

You mention cas as a sort of avatar for a different potential ending for the brothers, and highlight him representing:

An ending where higher powers stop yanking them around and they get to actually live in the life they’ve built for themselves.

So while i never considered cas an avatar for that, i do think we all wanted the brothers to have their freedom. “finally free.” so we can agree on wanting that end. but we disagree on whether it was delivered, i guess? because i feel it was.

you also talk about what you and many other fans conceivably wanted a happier ending to look like. can i -- i’m going to be totally honest. i have not seen a single person who’s critiquing the end saying “i just wanted sam and dean to grow old hunting together with their dog until they retire together and die of old age.”

would that be satisfying to those who are mad about the end? i personally don’t think so, but maybe my opinion is being coloured by the most vitriolic fans i’ve seen. if sam and dean got to have the life they wanted free of chuck, and dean didn’t die, and they kept going (or retired and opened a bar together!). maybe sam still had a kid, but again because romance wasn’t the point, the wife wasn’t important and they left her blurry still so we could interpret ourselves if she was a wife or a co-parent or a surrogate or what. maybe dean has a kid too, with a similar question-mark-wife. maybe we get a few images of them having a holiday with jodie and the girls. and then getting to heaven together in old age, greeting bobby with a beer, and going for a drive.

would that be an end that wouldn’t cause fandom uproar? i would enjoy it, soft an slightly discordant as it would be to me. i prefer the ending we got, bittersweet and heartbreaking though it was, but i wouldn’t be taking to social media to yell about it if we got a softer epilogue, so to speak.

on the other hand... would that still not be enough, at least not for so many of the angry fans? i’m genuinely unsure. it seems to me that so much of the ire is about destiel itself, even if people are pretending it’s about more and other things than that. not everyone, but like, a big portion of them. which leads me to believe that nothing short of dean and cas at least interpretable as together is what they wanted. if every other single thing about the existing finale was the same except that cas was the one to greet dean instead of bobby, and even with the same basic dialogue, without discussing the confession, but they have a lingering smile, and dean leaves to drive and wait for sam with the promise he’ll see cas later - 

if everything else stayed the same except who greeted dean, i genuinely don’t believe i’d be seeing almost any critique of the finale on my dash. maybe i’m cynical, but that’s where i’m at.

which is part of why i really struggle to believe that people are engaging in good faith when they critique the finale. because i feel like if it offered them either a) everything they’re purportedly asking for but still no cas and zero hint of destiel, vs. b) every other thing they claim to hate stays the same except there’s a wink and nod to destiel - i believe they would take the wink and nod. 

   On to some other things you raised:

But how can you know to walk away from a tragedy if the tragedy says “the end won’t be a tragedy, keep watching” right up until it ends in tragedy?

Oh i Get this. I hate thinking i’m consuming fun media only for it to rip my heart out at the end. i’ve literally - well, i’ve had a very unpleasant and distressing experience of this, actually. so i get it. also the opposite: i sometimes feel disappointed when i’m consuming media that is gripping and intense and painful, but then the end is too easy, too soft and happy?

BUT - supernatural never pretended it would have a happy end? the end was so. much. happier. than i ever expected. the Swan Song end was going to have Sam in hell being tortured by lucifer for eternity. according to something i read which i am fundamentally too lazy to link because who knows if it would have turned out this way but -- kripke was apparently going to have Dean jump in the cage with him at that end, if the series ended on S5? the ‘horror’ ending. completely devastating sacrifice for mankind (sam), and completely devastating sacrifice for his brother (dean). just -- oof. even if that wasn’t the plan and the series would’ve ended as the episode did - sam was still in the cage and cas was off waging war in heaven and dean was living every day knowing he was alive and his brother was being tortured.

i’m sorry if you thought you were watching a happier show. i know how much that hurts. that doesn’t mean the story was actually that happy though. sometimes, it’s on us as consumers to acknowledge we were misreading the media. i’ve had to do this. it’s hard, it hurts, but it helps you consume things healthier. i’ve had to do this growing recently, and i’m better off for it.

regarding the specific manner of dean’s death - that’s really not what my post was about and i’m not gonna address it here. i’ve talked about it elsewhere and so have others, and @lovetincture‘s original post spelled it out beautifully, in how human it was. i have feelings on how and why i loved dean’s death, and why it was the absolute opposite of what Chuck’s ending was and what he wanted (no blaze of glory), but i’ll leave those for another time.

They cast aside all the relationships they’ve built. [...] They lost/walked away from the life and home they built in the bunker. Dean got a season 1 death. Sam got a season 1 life.

I feel that there is a very huge difference between regression and progression when it comes to cyclical storytelling. And that difference seems to be missing from the ongoing discussions i’ve seen about this in fandom.

Coming full circle to season 1 does not at all mean that the development is ‘undone’ or that the story has regressed or that anything has been lost or destroyed. It can mean that, if the storyteller doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, but in this case i don’t (personally) feel it’s a fair critique.

Dean’s death might parallel his s1 not-quite death from Faith, but the s15 result of that death is night and day. Dean is no longer alone. Dean does not go up to a lonely heaven filled with bittersweet memories, where even his canonical soulmate and him have wide gulfs between the memories they fill their shared heaven with. Dean dies a hunter, but he dies a hunter who literally saved earth and changed heaven and gets to spend eternity with his brother, side-by-side and together without all the pain and miscommunication, and he gets to see his family and loved ones too. he died having literally made the world so much better.

even without that though?

his story comes full circle, but dean’s character development isn’t about his death, it’s about the fact that in the first several seasons dean could hardly admit he cared without acting like his teeth were being pulled. he was too afraid of abandonment to ask for someone to be by his side. he was too afraid of rejection to let anyone in. and in the end? he asks sam to stay. he tells him that he loves him. he pours his heart out and says all the things that 15 years ago were stoppered in his throat, words trying and failing to claw their way free but his hurt and fears were too deep.

dean is free.

the point of dean’s story coming full circle to season 1 parallels was specifically to highlight this incredible development, not to undermine it. he is different. he is free. 

god it makes me tear up just thinking about how happy i am for him despite how gutted i was by that scene??

(i could write a similar analysis for sam, about how he left for stanford to escape his life and how his finale life montage bits were the opposite of that, but honestly this post is long enough already).

Destiel is loosely a part of that promise in the sense that Castiel is a part of that promise. The symbol of free will

You make a super interesting argument about Cas being a symbol of free will. I don’t have much to say about it, because I’m gonna mull it over, because I think it’s kinda cool and I’ve never thought about it.

That’s - all i’ve got. thanks again for engaging. i’m happy to continue the convo if you have questions or want to reblog/reply 

(though my followers might hate me omg, i’ve been spamming long spn meta posts for weeks now, it’s just been so confronting to see the ongoing fan reaction on twitter and how divided it is...)

[piecesarefalling]

Shipping Thoughts

I have very strong opinions about ships, and can (sometimes) back them up with arguments (sometimes I just like or don’t like things for no particular reason), but ultimately, ships have a right to exist whether I or anyone else likes them or not. It’s totally fine to not like a ship, but it seems really excessive to toss accusations of immorality at a ship or a person. I disagree with the notion that bad relationships should be censored out of existence, and their creators harassed, because they’re bad. Maybe the creator is working through abuse they’ve experienced. Maybe they’re trying to find an outlet for their intrusive thoughts. Maybe they had an idea that they just thought would make a good story. 

However, while I mostly agree with the sentiment of “don’t harass people because of what they like or ship,” I do disagree with the notion that fiction has no effect on reality, or that people should always be expected and assumed to keep the two separate. This sentiment does a great disservice to the real-world power of fiction. Popular culture is what spreads ideas to the people, and if problematic relationships are normalized, then this bleeds into the real world - it can cause people who are being abused to assume they’re fine, or cause people with bad thoughts or tendencies to think it’s okay to act on them.

So what am I advocating for, exactly? Well, tagging and content warnings - and in the absence of them, one certainly has every right to criticize and call out the creator. Let me explain.

I have a somewhat smaller range of what I think is problematic in a relationship than some - after all, what is and isn’t unhealthy is often determined by how the relationship is portrayed. For example, I don’t believe relationships with significant age differences, relationships with power differences, or even some incestuous relationships are inherently unhealthy - it is very dependent on how the relationship is written, structured, or drawn. Yes, some relationships with age differences have an older character grooming a younger one, or a younger one acting essentially as an uncaring gold digger. But it’s certainly not always the case. Yes, some relationships with power differences involve the person with power using it to manipulate the person without it, or even if they are unaware of the power they hold, its existence makes the person without power feel as if they are somehow trapped or restrained from being as open as they’d like to be. But once again, if handled carefully, this is not always the case. You can find real-life examples of both of these situations, potentially even people you know.

And even with incestuous relationships, unless the actual relationship is abusive, I don’t really see a moral argument against incest (beyond the fact that the vast majority of people are, uh, not going to be falling for their family members, whether adoptive or blood-related) unless the couple plans to have biological children, which can raise the risk of genetic diseases. My reason for disliking fandom ships with incest is less because of a notion of immorality, and much more because the world has enough problems with misinterpreting how and why people show affection without you trying to interpret *every* show of love among family members as romantic and sexual love. If it’s part of an original story’s plot line? Not my favorite, but bearable. But I find fandom incest (again, adoptive or blood-related) unbearable due to what often feels like a deliberate erasure of the complexities of familial fondness.

So really, when I say “problematic relationships,” what I mean is “relationships that are abusive, manipulative, or otherwise unhealthy” and “relationships that inherently lack consent” (i.e. non-con situations, minor-with-adult - unless the age difference is small and the relationship is non-sexual, and zoophilia/bestiality).

If, however, they are tagged as such, or otherwise described as such, then that serves as a warning - a full admission that the author knows this is problematic, but just needed or wanted to write it for whatever reason. It’s the principle behind “dead dove, do not eat.” While you may dislike them - as I often do - relationships such as these are only deserving of moral criticism if they are not acknowledged as bad, and are thus normalized. But through rating systems, and content/trigger warnings, the author is taking time to acknowledge that these story elements aren’t an ideal to bring into reality, and making sure that their unhealthiness is made known. There can be benefits to this, as well - for example, writing an abusive relationship and saying “yeah, this is abusive” can make it so real-world people realize they’re being abused or taken advantage of when they hadn’t before. This is why I actually wish all mediums had content warnings put in by the creators, as I think that would be immensely useful to everyone in the public sphere.

Basically, the way I see it, everybody’s entitled to their opinions, likes, and dislikes, but don’t go criticizing the inherent morality of a person creating content for a relationship unless you think you can back up why it’s bad in a way that the author did not show that they intended. (And going on the immediate attack, while emotionally satisfying, is never a good way to have an actual discussion.)

[sometimesrosy]

Hello Rosy! This might be a difficult ask. Don’t know if you’ve already seen what’s going on on Twitter, but a white reviewer said she couldn’t understand a book because she started reading the sequel without reading the first book. It was a paid review, for a famous magazine. The book was written by a POC, and it was so enraging that suddenly a lot of reviews, written by her, with blatant racism started showing up. She’s said some pretty bad things, such as a white reader not understanding a different culture because it’s too exotic and was presented in a “non-white way”. She also said she clearly wasn’t the best reviewer for that book as she wasn’t of the author’s ethnicity. I think that’s super ignorant, because why can’t a white person try to understand a different culture? Anyway, this got me thinking. I love fantasy, and love it even more when it grabs elements and cultures of our own world. I love learning about different cultures than my own and just get to know them. I’m from a smaller country where most people are honestly ignorant about racism. I tend to believe I can easily put myself in other people’s shoes, and I never understood this white-privilege and need for everything to be about white-culture. I think it’s very dumb when we claim things need to be changed because we don’t understand them because we are white, and so POC should change their stories so we can “relate”. Reminds me of colonialism, tbh. I mean, the world is so beautiful and so diverse? Why do we feel the need to even dictate fantasy stories that way? What I wanted to ask is, as a white person, when does it become racist when trying to get to know another culture? Until a few years ago, I didn’t know the word “exotic” was bad, for example. Is too much enthusiasm bad? As an aspiring writer who’s white cis, when does it become disrespectful to write diverse characters and try to represent their culture in a respectful, truthful way? Thank you, and I’m sorry this is so long. (Didn’t proofread, hope it’s coherent!)

This is a difficult ask. Because it’s complicated and we are all right smack dab in the middle of this cultural upheaval. It’s had to get a clear perspective on it, because we’re drowning in it. I suppose I’ll answer it, not as if I have all the answers, but as if it’s a problem that I am sorting through and sometimes struggling with myself. I have been working on this answer for three  five days now so let’s see if I can wrap it up.

I did see the issue going around on twitter but I didn’t read the book and didn’t click on the review, because, well, sometimes I get tired of giving my attention to people who are acting in bad faith about issues of race and diversity. I saw a quote yesterday about the truth of a lot of people acting in bad faith. They can PRETEND they are innocent and ignorant and don’t know what they are doing, but a professional reviewer doesn’t bother reading the first book because it isn’t worth their time and then judges the book based on their ignorance?  That’s WILLFUL ignorance. That’s disrespect. Saying they couldn’t understand it because it’s not from a white perspective is both minimizing the humanity of the non white culture, the AOC, and the book, and also putting the white pov, the white audience and the white author ABOVE everyone who is not white. 

“I can’t relate to this book because I am not centered and it is not about people who look like me and are white.”

This is part of the “white default” mentality. This mentality says that the REAL human is a middle/upperclass, christian, cishet, abled, western white man, and everyone else is some sort of hyphenated person. The more hyphens, the less they count as human. A book about a hero, is about a white man. A book about a female hero-- or heroine, is a white woman. A Black hero, a Black man. A lesbian Black female hero. A poor, muslim, bisexual, Filipino, single mom... is apparently the kind of person that those at the “top” of the identity food chain can’t conceptualize as having universal human experiences. 

Because they are “the other.”

Saying that white people can’t relate to BIPOC in the content they consume is saying that white people and BIPOC do not share the same human experience. 

That’s one of the reasons why calling someone ‘exotic’ is problematic. Because it’s othering that person, saying they are odd or weird or unusual, not even in a bad way really, but in a way that makes them NOT a regular human. Perhaps something good enough for an exotic vacation or love affair or a night out at an exotic restaurant. It turns people into consumable goods that aren’t a part of the default human’s REAL world. Exotic is spicy and attractive and sexy and foreign. Something to be explored and then discarded when you go back to your real life.  

So yes it TOTALLY is akin to colonialism. And that reviewer, using their entitlement as the basis for their review shows a marked incompetence as a reviewer. That is a BAD reviewer who acted in bad faith to attack authors and stories that were different from their dominant experience.

Okay. So that’s the discussion about the reviewer and the BIPOC authors. Listen, the publishing industry is a MESS, and it has been for years. Publishers, editors, reviewers, marketing, book covers, agents, writing associations and, the worst one for the readers, the writers, too. Yes. It’s awful, every time you turn around you find out something horrible about a favorite creator. 

I think it’s because when we create, we use who we are, underneath our polite public personas, to create new worlds and characters. And that’s the part of us that is full of biases and unquestioned prejudices, wounds, resentments, fears and weaknesses. Those things come out in our stories. No matter who we are they do. But also when a person gets power and success, our cutlure allows them to abuse that power, and then we start hearing stories about what our favorite creators do with that power-- and we start to connect that abusive or toxic or racist or transphobic behavior back to the stories, books, movies and shows that they’ve created and then, voila. It’s all painted in black and white on the page or screen or whatever. 

I think it’s just part of the vulnerability of being an artist. You put yourself out there to be seen, and that means a lot of your ugliness is visible.  We all have ugliness. We’re all raised in a racist world. Not just those who are white and powerful, but also BIPOC who have all that internalized racism or racism against other minorities, or classism or homophobia or whatever. All that stuff is in there. 

How do we keep racism and other biases out of our work? We probably can’t get rid of it all, because humans are imperfect. And also, sometimes you want to write ABOUT that imperfection. Flaws are part of what make fictional characters interesting. And sometimes we want to address that. Sometimes we WANT to tell a story without explicitly saying, “this bad and shouldn’t be that way.” There is a reason to write about the bad, hard and unfair things in life, and they shouldn’t necessarily be erased from our fiction.

BUT.

As a writer, at this point in time, you really don’t want to be at the mercy of your unquestioned biases, blindspots, ignorance, bigotry, racism, homophobia, misogyny etc. 

We, as authors, want to be aware of how these things affect our writing and stories. So I guess the first step is to be pay attention when we hear about how racism etc is shown in the world and fiction. If you can see the problem of colonialism and exoticism in reviewers or authors, if you can see how taking, say, Chinese culture as a basis for your SF world, but not having any Chinese characters or actors in your show (Serenity/Firefly) is racist, colonialist, unfair, and tbh flawed storytelling, then you have to pay attention when you yourself want to use multicultural elements in your story.

I think one thing you have to look out for as a white author writing about other cultures is a kind of cultural tourism, where you look at other cultures and try to *use* the exotic elements to spice up your story. To indicate “the other.” Or perhaps something that is exotic and consumable. Even stereotypes that seem positive to you, powerful and beautiful and exotic can be dehumanizing. Like the “magical negro,” or the “spicy latina,” or the “tech genius east asian.” Why? Because they’re caricatures, not real people.  I have also heard that sometimes using religions in your work is considered offensive because they are closed religions. You have to be a part of them to understand them. I am not sure about this, because I am not from a closed religion. I’m from a buddhist tradition that was missionary in nature. (I however hate proselytizing and it’s one of the reasons I left that religion.)

Being a mixed race, multicultural person from a minority religion, who belongs to many cultures and so doesn’t belong to any, I personally think sharing culture, art, stories and influences is a good thing. I couldn’t exist if we didn’t. And I use influences from all over in my work. 

When does this enter into appropriation? I think that is a very good question. Using a native american war bonnet to fancy up your bikini so you can get drunk at a music festival definitely seems like appropriation. Writing a well developed, well rounded Lakota character who’s been well researched and stays away harmful stereotypes... maybe not.

I would NOT write a story attempting to Tell The Truth of what it is to BE another culture. Recently a part Puerto Rican, mostly white author wrote a novel attempting to do that with, I believe, the Mexican immigrant experience, American Dirt, and as far as I can tell, failed miserably. Maybe it was a good story, but it was NOT an authentic tale of the Mexican experience. I didn’t read it, but what I read about it felt as if she thought she could write an expressionist tear jerker about her impression of someone else’s experience. As someone who shares a similar background to that author, I would NEVER have had the temerity to write about that particular story. You’re from NYC lady. What do you know of border crossings? But if I HAD incorporated that experience into my stories (not trying to offer some sort of definitive narrative) I would have done more research from primary sources.

Now all authors are writing about other experiences. Other lives. If not, it would all be scarcely concealed autobiographies. We could only ever write about people who looked like us and came from exactly the same backgrounds and had the same experiences as ours and how boring would that be? This topic is SUPER complicated and I keep thinking about more things to address, but if I keep going I’ll never finish this and it will be too long for everyone to read anyway. 

Let’s sum up.

Can you, a white person, write about cultures not your own? Yes. With cautions.

be aware of your own biases and racism and assumptions

don’t attempt to write a definitive experience. Don’t write about what it’s like to BE Black unless you are Black. You can’t know. Even Black people don’t have the same experience.

stay away from negative stereotypes and be on the look out for less negative ones that are still dehumanizing.

don’t consume someone else’s culture and disrespect the people. 

remember to keep your BIPOC characters well rounded, realistic, and human. They all have pasts and families and fears and hopes and traumas and careers. Don’t treat them as a prop for your white characters. (although do remember that all secondary characters are there to support the MCs, so this can be tricky.)

RESEARCH. Simply basing a character or culture on someone you know is not enough. You should also be aware of history, culture, other depictions, the conversation about that culture, the voices of the people, etc.

Be willing to take criticism. Anyone writing BIPOC characters or cultures is going to get criticism. Period. It’s gonna happen, whether you’re a white author or a BIPOC. Sometimes AOC are more inspected than white authors. All the time, actually, from both white people and POC. 

BE RESPECTFUL. Write BIPOC characters as human as white characters who share your culture. 

oh I’m sure there’s more. but i’m hitting post now or I’ll never send this. 

[relaxedmouse]

Authors and Readers - a few thoughts

In regards to John Green’s novel, The Fault in our Stars, it seems like everyone focuses on the “teens with cancer” aspect or the “love story” aspect. But I feel the Peter Van Houten part is underrated. Especially in this era of social media, where content creators seem “closer” than ever, the ideas raised by the Peter Van Houten plot grow in relevancy.

Hazel wants to know what happens after the ending of her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction. She wants the answers so badly that she gets on a plane and travels all the way from the US to Amsterdam, to meet the author, Peter Van Houten, in person. However, he is unwilling to give her anything.

He tells Hazel, “That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.” He adds that he has no more ability to imagine beyond his novel than he would for somebody else’s novel. He may be the author, but he has no more power over the book than an average reader does.

Despite him clearly being dismissive toward his own novel, and despite the fact that she cares way more than he does, Hazel continues to insist, “You are the most qualified person to imagine” what happens to the characters.

That chapter from The Fault in our Stars raises interesting questions. Where does a story live? Inside the mind of the writer, the minds of the readers, both, or neither? Does a story simply have no life at all, outside of the words that are written right there on the page? Green’s book also asks us to examine this flawed notion: that the author has more authority to imagine a story than the many readers whose hearts and minds have been touched by their work.

Authors are humans. They can forget things, contradict themselves, lack knowledge, and have blind spots in their judgment. Especially thanks to social media, authors have more chances to slip up and show that they’re ordinary people. Now, it’s so easy for a fan to ask an author a question on Twitter, and see that the author tweets a reply that clashes with something in their published story.

Sometimes a writer is asked a question and they just answer on the spot, without thinking about the implications of what they said. Sometimes, a writer is indecisive, and they’ll give different answers to the same question, at different times. Sometimes they simply don’t care about a story they wrote long ago. Sometimes there are multiple writers and they disagree on certain plot points.

Let’s say you’re at a store and you happen to run into an author. You ask them a complicated question about their fantasy universe and they give a two-word answer, not even glancing away from the shelf as they talk to you. Do you take that answer seriously? Sure, it came right from the author’s mouth, but doesn’t it feel kind of . . . flimsy . . . to you?

Personally, I find it difficult to take writers seriously when they do interviews that reveal tons of extra information that wasn’t in the book/movie/video game/whatever. Something just feels “off” about a writer who is basically writing more of their story within an interview or a blog post, rather than their normal medium. But then, what’s the alternative?

For a while, I thought to myself, “It only counts if it’s in the published book. It doesn’t count if the author just says something while chatting with a reporter, or in a YouTube comment.” But I’ve realized that the “published book” definition has problems. For one thing, it ignores stories that are mainly told through oral tradition. I don’t want to say that a story is “lesser” just because it’s told through the mouth rather than text. Furthermore, what does “published” even mean? If I write a story and then pay my next-door neighbor to print it on their home printer, does that mean it’s published? What does a publishing company have to do in order to be “official”? Oh, and also! Let’s be honest; it’ll weigh down a story if you clutter the text with various bits of character trivia instead of focusing on the plot.

But what are you to do if a creator reveals a bit of “world-building” or “character info” that’s so ridiculous that you can’t believe it? Sometimes, content creators say things that make it painfully clear that they are just one person, with cultural biases, who lacks understanding of life experiences that aren’t their own. What to do then, when you’re confronted with that harsh truth? Rather than believing a writer who says an absurd thing, the more natural instinct is to say that the author is a flawed human being who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

All this being said, I don’t think fans have absolute power, either. I’ve seen readers become intensely attached to head canons that directly contradict what was stated in the original text. This would be fine - having a few head canons for yourself is generally harmless - except when fans reach the point where they feel so empowered and entitled that they harass writers because “how dare you write something that didn’t cater to my specific tastes”!

I’ve struggled between different trains of thought. I’ve wavered between “the author is not a dictator, and audiences should have the freedom to make many interpretations” and “damn it, why do you people even bother reading the original text if you’re going to ignore everything in it”? It’s a constant struggle, one without end.

[madokasoratsugu]

This is making my heart hurt im so so mad and disappointed that tsukada did the cast so dirty like that... the cast i actively thought of and cherished when i was still into sns... now i realize we all gave more of a shit about the characters than the actual author does :'(

yeah...its really disheartening to see a series’ downfall like this;; because its so clearly spelled out that this is the work of an author who just...doesnt care about his story anymore, despite all his fans still rooting for him (back when Central Arc was still ongoing and everyone believed things could still be fixed anyway)

imo this turnout was also super disrespectful to anyone who is/was a fan/supporter of Shokugeki. granted its Tsukada’s story and he can tell it however he wants, but i think our feelings of hurt is just as valid, considering how the fanbase has been voicing out their discontent since the Central Arc (pretty sure ive seen comments from the Japanese side of the fandom not being happy about it too), and how without the fanbase he wouldn’t have half the fame and fortune he now has. its like spitting in the face of the people who helped build you up.

idk, this might be entitlement but imo if he didnt enjoy writing the story anymore/felt that he couldn’t deliver a story that lived up to the standards of fans, he could have just stopped anytime after the Central Arc instead of dragging it into a disastrous arc like BLUE. i dont think he was ranking so well that Shounen Jump would have forced him to stay anyway ? 

ALSO: i wanna point out that the editor should probably share some of the blame. they could have been the one pushing Tsukada to make certain story choices (although i highly doubt they created the whole mess of Central, BLUE and Asahi). but even if they didnt, and Tsukada was the one making all the decisions himself, the editor should have stepped in to stop him. any editor worth half their salt would Definitely be able to tell that Asahi and BLUE would have been terrible additions/progress for the story.

but yeah, always sucks when you realise that you as a fan care more about a series than their own creator ! esp when you dont know the reason that drove the creator from their own creation in the first place :((

[independentartistbuzz]

7 From the Women with Brittaney Delsarte

Brittaney Delsarte is making a name for herself in the artistic world. She’s not only a powerful musician, but she’s a journalist, actor, and dancer too. She’s also produced, directed, and edited her own documentary for the National Urban League titled Master League: The Columbia Urban League. She’s a women born for the stage and believes her body is a vessel she uses her skills and gifts as a platform to enable Youth Empowerment and Education, Civic Engagement and Leadership Empowerment, and Civil Rights and Racial Justice Empowerment.

We got the chance to talk to Brittaney for our 7 From the Women series which you can find below:

What Have You Been Working To Promote Lately?

So my coworkers (I’m a marketing content producer) brought me to realize that basically I'm the real life Hannah Montana! When I announced that I am dropping an EP they were amazed by my multi-hynate career. From journalism to marketing, to social justice to acting, and finally now a self-producing recording artist, I have been around the block. However, It’s been an artistic rebirth to dedicate an entire piece of art to something that I love so dearly! 

I am so happy to share that on my birthday month, August, I dropped my first self-produced EP “Call Me Blossom” on Friday the 13th. Call Me Blossom is inspired by my Southern charm, my 90s childhood, and my whimsical, vulnerable poetry. It's the story of a young Southern debutante/ caterpillar blossoming into a fully realized adult butterfly. The sound drifts between R&B, jazz, subterranean trap, and airy dance-pop. 

Being an Independent artist is not for the faint and heart. Passion, hard work, tears, and lots of coins went into creating this art. So I ask that you please support this art by streaming the music! Add the songs to your playlist, repost and share! The link is here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5wqrLNuUlUBgMhNTpCWKs7?si=nvgJaxkaRhmB9ycIfkK6vA&dl_branch=1  

Also feel free to follow me on Instagram for music updates! https://www.instagram.com/brittandbroadway/

Please tell us about your favorite song written, recorded, or produced by another woman and why it’s meaningful to you.

Going off my first impulse, my throat chakra wants me to tell the people to put some respect on Angela Winbush’s name! Not only can she melt the skin off your bones with her divine vocals, but she is a remarkable R&B songwriter, producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist. Women represent less than 5% of music producers and engineers; and yet, Angela was singing, writing, composing and producing in the 80s, a time when female producers and composers were not highly recognized or widely accepted by their male counterparts. Her work is meaningful to me because I too am a multi-hyphenated artist, and so I  studied her career in order to learn how to navigate as an artist who is completely hands on and takes ownership of my projects by writing my own songs, composing and producing my own vocals, in a male-dominated studio culture. One of my favorite songs that she’s written, composed and produced is a song off her “Sharp” album is Angel. Her range is BREATHTAKING on this song! She sang the hell out of this song! I feel every word she sings, the composition is so smooth and groovy and it is a transcendental cosmic vibration that your solar plexus needs. I highly suggest you stream this song if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Call me Ms. Winbush! I want to work with you!

What does it mean to you to be a woman making music/in the music business today and do you feel a responsibility to other women to create messages and themes in your music? 

Wow! It means everything! Because women are everything in everything and everything is within us; and so with our celestial contributions to making music, and standing in our rightful place within the music business, we are able to advance the collective growth of women creators in entertainment and society at large! 

What is the most personal thing you have shared in your music or in your artist brand as it relates to being female?

I have a song on my EP, Call Me Blossom, entitled “I Don’t Support.” My nerves are tap dancing in my belly because that’s one of the most vulnerable songs written and recorded. Between last year's murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others, and the problematic and homophobic statements that was made by rapper, DaBaby, this song couldn't be more timely. As a Black woman I deal with so much oppression from the outside world and then I come home only to deal with all of this subsidiary oppression within my community and it is hard. I'm tired of Black men calling Black women hoes and bitches in their songs. I'm tired of Black men killing Black folks of the LGBTQIA community. I am done defending, showing love for, supporting anyone that doesn't see value in my life when I see value in there albeit that person is black or white. I had gotten frustrated that I had to write a song about it.

Who’s your favorite female icon (dead or alive) and why?

Growing up, all I ever did was sing and dance with imaginary friends, Michael Jackson and Beyonce being among the few. Before developing knowledge of astrology, in retrospect, it only makes sense that I would share a connection with two fellow Virgos. I was the only child in my household for eight years and so Beyonce was the big sister I never had but always wanted. Instead of going outside to play, I studied many artists, but mainly, I studied Beyonce. I wore Beyonce purses, went to see her in concert, carried her album covers inside of my middle school and even my high school binders. My mother did a “Beyonce Intervention '' because she was tired of me choosing Beyonce songs for every talent show, singing competition, pageant, basically any and every performance that I did. I now understand that though I might have been a tad bit obsessed with her, It was only because I identified with her. I am DETERMINED to work with her and I look forward to the day that I can tell her thank you for lifting up women instead of falling into the trap of competition and envy, for representing all the SOUTHERN GALS; FOR BEING UNAPOLOGETICALLY BLACK; for giving us her all on the stage whether it's vulgar, vulnerable, or electrifying! For reminding me that being polite and being a business woman doesn’t match and that it’s okay to be A Boss! For taking the creation of art very seriously, and, for using her platform to “quietly” give back to her community.

If you could collaborate with any other female artists, who would you choose?

Oh this is easy! I already mentioned Beyonce and Angela Winbush so I’ll go ahead and mention these immaculate women: Stephanie Mills, Esperanza Spalding, Chante Moore, Rachelle Ferrell, Liza Minelli, Debbie Allen, Emily King, Chloe & Halle, Tinashe, Amel Larrieux, my cousins Toni and Tamar Braxton...the list goes on! 

What was the most challenging thing you have had to face as a female artist?

Dealing with my counterparts misinterpreting my southern charm and kindness for weakness. Not receiving enough support as it relates to setting up  my music business successfully so that I’m building revenue. The intimidation of male producers and creatives when I delegate to them what I want and how I want it because I pay them to get the job done as I see fit. They also don’t like when I assert authority over the mixing stage once recording is over, the contracts and agreements, yeah they don’t deal with that too well.

You can find Brittaney via:

Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | TikTok | Spotify | SoundCloud

[scull-dog]

Female Representation in Mainstream Science Fiction: Muted Group Theory in The-X Files

Megan McGrew University of North Carolina Wilmington

Hey, so this is the short essay I wrote on the difference between how men and women write female characters in The X-Files. Give it a read if you’d like, I’m pretty happy with the result!

I’m re-writing this into a deeper ~20 page paper in a few months, so maybe I’ll post that too if there’s interest. 

Enjoy!

The science fiction genre is a unique form of entertainment, as its’ changes tend to reflect real-world innovations and discoveries. These stories create a speculative perspective that explores how developing ideas might impact a population. Early contributors such as Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and George Orwell have been regarded as the pioneers and fathers of science fiction. (Cates.) However, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is frequently overlooked, despite being the first example of science fiction as we know it today. (History.com) This imbalance in representation can be explained just as the genre is; that is to say, that authors pulled from their experiences and peers. In the nineteenth and twentieth century, female scientists rarely saw recognition for their work. These women would either be dismissed despite equal contributions while their male counterparts received the praise, or would be dismissed entirely. (Bordelon) Television shows such as Doctor Who and Star Trek: The Original Series are guilty of perpetuating this practice. When men write these female characters, they are ignorant of realistic expectations that a woman would have. They are depicted as strong, intelligent women, but are somehow satisfied with little recognition in order to benefit their male leaders. 

Chris Carter’s The X-Files demonstrates this power struggle in a number of ways throughout its’ eleven seasons and two movies. The two main characters, Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, are partners in the FBI. Scully was assigned to the X-Files unit to provide a rational, scientific point of view to counter Mulder’s belief in the supernatural. She’s educated, having graduated medical school and the FBI academy; emotionally and physically strong, and is generally respected by Mulder. However, an analysis and comparison of the season six episode “Milagro” and the season seven episode “all things” reveal that Carter’s Scully is a woman as a man would want to see her.

“Milagro,” which originally aired in April 1999, was written by Carter himself. The episode focuses on a man named Phillip Padgett, a novelist who becomes obsessed with Scully and spends all of his time writing his detailed personal fantasies.

Padgett perfectly fits the “nice guy” stereotype; he thinks that he deserves Scully and that she will reciprocate his feelings for no reason other than his interest in her. His attempts at flattery are extremely invasive, eventually crossing the line into criminal activity when he reveals that he moved to be closer to her. When Scully expresses her discomfort and explicitly denies his advances, his anger is with Scully, concluding that she doesn’t understand her own feelings. As it becomes more obvious that Scully doesn’t match Padgett’s exaggerated perception of her, his hostility escalates, ultimately resulting in a murder attempt when he learns of Scully’s feelings towards Mulder.

One year later, Gillian Anderson (who plays Scully on the show) wrote and directed “all things.” A string of unlikely events results in an uncomfortable encounter between Scully and Daniel Waterston, a man she had an affair with over ten years prior. Like Phillip Padgett in “Milagro,” Waterston is dismissive of and tries to correct Scully when she expresses her feelings, makes assumptions about Scully, (based on his perception of her from their past relationship as opposed to Padgett’s glorified representation) and believes he is entitled to Scully simply because he wants her. 

Carter writes Scully as she relates to the men in the episode. Every action she makes in “Milagro” is a direct effect of something a man does. She is never seen alone, only being described by Padgett in his novel or being told off by her partner. The end of the episode doesn’t provide any relief for Scully, and the last lines still paint Padgett as the victim. Anderson takes a character with similar motives and turns his relationship with Scully into an opportunity for her to asses her own reservations. The end of “all things” leaves Scully with a renewed confidence in herself.

Outsiders observing only these two episodes might determine that Anderson’s episode was an attempt at assimilation. She was held to the same expectations as male writers and directors, conforming to Kramarae’s suggestion that assimilators aim to “change the rules so that they incorporate the life experiences” (p. 456). However, examining statements made by Chris Carter, Gillian Anderson, and others involved in the production of The X-Files, it becomes apparent that women are being separated. In an “ask me anything” Reddit thread from January, Carter responded to concerns of ignorant sexism and objectification of women by stating, “I resent the calling of it misogyny, unintentional or not” and later arguing that “...the message we need to be sending to young women would be more likely, "don't take a job on the X-Files. You'll be abducted like eight times, have chips implanted in you and who knows what else."” (Carter). Despite creating The X-Files, Dana Scully, and the obstacles presented to her, his solution to ending misogyny on his own show is to not include any women in the first place. 

Anderson proved that her gender is not an impairment and she is just as capable as her male counterparts, while Carter reinforced the decisiveness of separation. Assimilation can only improve upon The X-Files and other science fiction.

Works Cited

Carter, C. (2018). Believe it or not, I’m Chris Carter, creator and executive producer of The X-Files. Season 11 starts tomorrow at 8/7c on FOX! AMA [Online Forum]. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/7no3en/believe_it_or_not_im_chris_carter_creator_and/.

Bordelon, Suzanne. “Reflecting on Feminist Rhetorical Studies and the Covert Rhetoric of Anita Loos.” Vol. 33, no. 3/4, 2013, pp. 712–722., www.jstor.org.liblink.uncw.edu/stable/43854574. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.

History.com Staff. (2009). Frankenstein published. Retrieved February 16, 2018, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/frankenstein-published

Kramarae, Cheris. A First Look at Communication Theory (Conversations with Communication Theorists) (Chapter 6, Muted Group Theory). McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Kindle Edition.

[grim-on-the-darkside]

Star Wars Quotes regarding the Expanded Universe and it’s place in things under Lucas. -------------------------------------

I’ve shared quotes on this subject in the past, I don’t believe I have shared these ones, some I have only found recently, and other’s I had but I’m not the most organized person, so I found them again. I apologize if some of these are repeats, I tried to avoid that as much as possible. All of these quotes are verified, but you should never take anyone’s word for that on the internet. Feel free to verify them yourselves.

Anyone who would like to use these quotes and include in some of their works, by all means. It isn’t always easy to get to the truth of things, there is a great deal of misinformation on the Internet. It is only my wish to see George Lucas’ legacy remembered for what it was in truth. He gave us such a wonderful gift, that has touched the lives of so many, in so many ways. Wherever our interests may lie, I feel we own him something in return. - This is a decisive subject, and its been so for many years. This is in no way intended to speak to the artistic value found in the EU, that is a totally subjective consideration. There are no right or wrong opinions. Just opinions and everyone is entitled to their own.

I just want his Star Wars to be remembered as it truly was and his words and vision as they truly were. In the end, we all share our love for his creation with each other.

Star Wars is Forever.

"The importance of The Clone Wars that cannot be understated is that it was the last huge expansion of the Star Wars universe that came directly from George Lucas." ~ Pablo Hidalgo

--------------------

"I always think of the research you speak of as what I knew about the EU before I took this job. As I stated above, working directly with George changes the way you see the EU and everything in it."

~ Dave Filoni 2008

----------------

DAVE FILONI: The First Time George Lucas Talked About Ahsoka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAjnLseHQwA

--------------

"I get all my information on the Clone Wars from him. [George Lucas]"

"I can pitch him ideas and say 'lets do certain things', but at the end of the say he will say 'yes' or he will say 'no', and than that is the way it's gonna go." ~ Dave Filoni, 2019

-------------

"From Issue 77 Of Star Wars Insider, Using Dark Empire & The Thrawn Trilogy As Examples. "So so episodes beyond Return of the Jedi exist? Nothing beyond possinle story points and ideas, certainly not fleshed out story treatments or scripts. Fans often wonder if Dark Empire or the Thrawn Trilogy were based off those notes or are meant to be Episodes VII, VIII, IX. - That's not the case. Those works are the creation of their respective authors with the guidance of editors at Lucas Licensing. They are not, nor ever were, meant to be George Lucas' definitive vision of what happens next" ~ Pablo Hidalgo, 2004 https://ibb.co/K9PMgH3

[This is a screenshot of the Original Text that I found]

-------------

“Everything that I’ve worked on at Lucasfilm has been considered canon.” ~ Dave Filoni

--------------------------------------

“Working on ‘Clone Wars,’ it was always canon.” ~ Dave Filoni

---------------------------------------

One of the main characters in the feature film, a 90 minute introduction to the series that hits theaters August 15, is Anakin's teenage Padawan, Ahsoka. Lucas said:

   "[With Ahsoka] I wanted to develop a character who would help Anakin settle down. He's a wild child after [Attack of the Clones]. He and Obi Wan don't get along. So we wanted to look at how Anakin and Ahsoka become friends, partners, a team. When you become a parent or you become a teacher you have to become more responsible. I wanted to force Anakin into that role of responsibility, into that juxtaposition. I have a couple of daughters so I have experience with that situation. I said instead of a guy let's make her a girl. Teenage girls are just as hard to deal with as teenage boys are."

~ George Lucas 2008

https://io9.gizmodo.com/george-lucas-spills-all-about-clone-wars-at-skywalker-r-5033398

-----------------------

"Understand, that the Holocron's primary purpose is to keep track of Star Wars continuity for Lucas Licensing and to some degree Lucas Online. To my knowledge, it is only rarely used for production purposes."

~ Leland Chee 2005/6

[Lucas was in Production]

-----------

"Star Wars continuity, even EU continuity, does not rest on my shoulders. Our licensees submit product directly to either our editors or our product development managers. The Holocron serves as a tool for them to check any issues regarding continuity, and after that, if the editors or developers have any questions, they pass it along to me to check for continuity. At the same time, I am constantly on the lookout to make sure that any new continuity being created gets entered in the Holocron. With regard to the the films and The Clone Wars, I am not involved in continuity approvals though I have often been asked to provide reference material."

~ Leland Chee

-------------------

"The question selected from The Furry Conflict poll was: How much does the Expanded Universe influence the movies?

As I asked him, Lucas leaned back a moment and said to me “Very little.” When he first had agreed to let people write Expanded Universe books, he had said “I’m not gonna read ‘em” and it was a “different universe” and that he wanted to keep away from the time period of his saga. He jokingly complained, however, that now when he writes a script he has to look through an encyclopedia to make sure that a name he comes up with doesn’t come too close to something in the EU.

He later commented that the future of Star Wars may lie in other venues outside of feature film."

- "Marc Xavier", November 2003, "The Furry Conflict and the Great ‘Beard‘ of the Galaxy"  (report based on a Q&A session with George Lucas which occurred at USC on 11-19-03)

--------------

"Q: in that vein, is it possible we'll see more Star Wars TV product?

A: Because I"m retiring from this part of my creative life, I'm open to more TV Product. but not more feature films, the story is complete. [and any other story wouldn't be my philosophy and views,] the books are not the same philosophy as the movies."

George Lucas 2003

---------------

Q: Can you quote any good story other than the movies?

A: No, I don't think so. (laughs)." ~ George Lucas

----------------

"George's view of the universe is his view," Chee says with a slightly grudging tone. "He's not beholden to what's gone before."

~ Leland Chee 2008

----------------

"And then there's the very top level of canon, the inviolable, infallible level of Truth, marked GWL—George Walton Lucas. It's the divine word of the Creator who stands outside his universe and is not subject to the rules that govern it."

~ Leland Chee 2008

Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franschise Continuity cop.

[Actually, it was more like that Chee was standing outside of his.]

---------------

"Understand, that the Holocron's primary purpose is to keep track of Star Wars continuity for Lucas Licensing, and to some degree Lucas Online. To my knowledge, it is only rarely used for production purposes."

~ Leland Chee [I'm not sure about the exact date on this, but I think its from around 2004 or 2005]

[Lucas worked in production]]

------------

"I've been against a multiverse even before Disney"

~ Leland Chee 2018

[No, really? =p ]

--------------

"Is the "C" class part of the overall continuity alongside "G" class?"

As far as LucasBooks and Lucas Licensing are concerned, of course it is. LucasBooks and Lucas Licensing hold sway over the content and storylines of the Expanded Universe, and thus have every right to declare a canon of those materials. Whether this internal declaration is subscribed to by parent company LFL or Lucas himself is another matter, one which, though interesting, is outside the scope of this Holocron-oriented thread.

Leeland Chee 2004

-----------------

"So with the Story Group overseeing all of the content in film and television and elsewhere, we don’t have to retroactively make those changes. We can anticipate those changes. We can seed things in one medium [and see them grow] in another. So we might be seeding things in books or TV that you might not realize is substantial until years down the road. And if people knew what the road map looked like, they would just be floored.”

Leland Chee, 2017 - SYFY WIRE

[Chee is much happier working for Disney. He finally got what he wanted. A one Universe Star Wars.- Which would be great besides for that whole Disney part! =p]

----------------

“In these early drafts, the planet was called Had Abbadon. The name Coruscant came from author Timothy Zahn for his 1991 novel, Heir to the Empire. It's actually a real word that means ”glittering” or ”giving forth flashes of light.” When it came time to name the city-planet for Episode I, after considering several other names, Lucas decided to go with the already established Coruscant."

- Steve Sansweet, LFL/Fan Relations, June 2003

------------------

“As far as I know he hasn’t read any of my novels. From what I’ve heard Lucas is a visual man, he likes the comic books for the visual aspect. Frankly I don’t think that he has time to read so I am not offended.”

-Timothy Zahn, Author for the EU, The book report interview November, 1997

-----------------------

That means Zahn’s books won’t be directly adapted, but the author says that was always the case: “The books were always just the books.”

“It could be an entirely new storyline, but if he picks and chooses bits and pieces from the expanded universe, we’d all be thrilled to death.”

~ Timothy Zahn

-----------------

"Q: Did George Lucas intend for Boba Fett to die in the sarlacc, despite what others may say or print?

A: Yes, in George's view -- as far as the films go -- the baddest bounty hunter in the Galaxy met his match in the Great Pit of Carkoon where --unfortunately for Mr. Fett -- the ghastly sarlacc made its home.

However, Lucas also approved Fett's comeback in the expanded universe. And of course, by going back in time with the prequels, the Star Wars creator has brought Boba Fett back to life himself, albeit at a much younger age."

- Steve Sansweet, LFL/Fan Relations, December 2002

-----------------

As far as I know, George Lucas himself is not involved. He has a liaison group that deals with the book people, the game people, etc. They do the day-to-day work. Occasionally, he will be asked a question and will give an answer."

"I did meet Lucas once for a few minutes."

~ Timothy Zahn

[They spoke about 1930′s cinema and Samurai movies. They never even talked about Star Wars! How nuts is that!]

Timothy Zahn’s Trilogy was outstanding. Gotta give him his due.

---------------

In 2014, Disney declared the Expanded Universe was no longer canon. It became ‘Legends’. What do you think of this, seeing all of your work suddenly become non-canon?

"Those of us writing the EU were always told, all along, from the very beginning (have I stressed that strongly enough?), “Only the Movies are Canon.” Sure, it was disappointing."

~ Kathy Tyers, EU author [Truce at Bakura] Interview: April 2018

https://starwarsinterviews.com/various/authors/kathy-tyers-author/

-------------

EU Disclaimers [Stating these were not George Lucas' Sequels and not what he would use.] - [I did not take all of these personally, but they do match those that I did.]

https://ibb.co/GfwK0CB https://ibb.co/Tr3dj06 https://ibb.co/19B66B1 https://ibb.co/p1mCFcm https://ibb.co/rtSVh7d https://ibb.co/Tcm7dFy https://ibb.co/ygQXjCN https://ibb.co/GRvmV7V - Jonathan W. Rinzler is/was an author and editor for Lucas Licensing's book division. In 2005, he was hired to write three Star Wars guide books,respectively Star Wars: Visionaries (although he only wrote the introduction of this one), The Art of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and The Making of Star Wars Revenge of the Sith. He later went to write The Art of Revenge of the Sith that same year. In 2007, he wrote and published The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film amongst many other such works for Star Wars.

This is more than a disclaimer, it's a quote, this is a question directly to him as he worked in Lucas Licensing asking him if the Expanded Universe wasn't considered canon ever why did Lucas allow it to exist. Answer - Money. He was also a personal acquaintance of Lucas' for many years. He also is quoted as telling the story as to why Lucas hated Mara Jade so much. -

Rinzler, George Lucas “Couldn’t Stand” The Character Of Mara Jade - http://starwarshub.net/2019/02/01/according-to-author-j-w-rinzler-george-lucas-couldnt-stand-the-character-of-mara-jade/

[Lucas said [paraphrasing], ‘Jedi don’t marry. They take vows.’

[This site also contains a good amount of information on the only legitimate sequel trilogy to Return of the Jedi, the one Lucas came up with himself and completed Treatments for Episodes, 7, 8, and 9 in 2011.]

For a more in-depth look at Lucas’ Sequel trilogy treatment in so far as we know it, these are excellent sites and we know a lot more about his Sequel trilogy and his vision for how the Saga was truly meant to end. There’s some beautiful concept art to be found as well.

George Lucas’ Episode VII - https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/george-lucas-episode-vii-c272563cc3ba

George Lucas' Ideas for His Own Star Wars Sequel Trilogy-https://io9.gizmodo.com/george-lucas-ideas-for-his-own-star-wars-sequel-trilogy-1826798496

STAR WARS: The Original Plans for the Sequel Trilogy - YouTube -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1dM9qFe4p0

https://ibb.co/jvph85c

[barberjourney-blog]

Let’s start from the beginning...

     Well here goes. My first attempt at blogging. That is, unless you count the occasional snarky comment on Facebook or that week in college I tried to do Xanga. Why a blog you might ask? Well, I’ve always considered myself a better communicator through the written word. I come from a family of writers. My sister is an editor for a publishing company. My mom’s list of published works include short stories, magazine articles, and children’s Sunday School curriculum. Even my dad has been known to pen a witty sonnet (usually on the topic of what he cooked for dinner or an embellished fishing trip story). So I guess writing is a family tradition. And although I haven’t practiced the skill in quite a while, it’s always been something I’ve rather enjoyed. I think it’s the organization that I like. Sometimes when I speak, my words get ahead of my thoughts, but not so with writing. Writing is more controlled. I’m able to key a thought, then read it and process it. If I don’t like what I’ve said, that backspace click is just a few finger strokes up. 

      I’m one paragraph in and already rambling. Forgive me. Let’s get to the point of this thing.

     If you’ve followed my Instagram over the last couple of years, you may have noticed a trend in my posts. I’ve visited a lot of barbershops over the last 2 years. A LOT. I‘ve lost count of the exact number a while back, but I’d estimate I’ve seen 20+ shops over the last 12 months. I’ve visited shops in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, and Gulf Shores just to name a few. Now, I’m not talking about the salon where your mom goes. Or Sports Clips. I’m talking about the good old fashioned men’s barbershop. The kind of shop maybe you’ve only seen in movies. Men sitting around the shop discussing sports, politics, family, and life. Maybe some good tunes on the radio and the aroma of a hot cup of joe wafting through the air. And a skilled, seasoned barber honing his craft at the chair. His hands are surgical and his gift with the clippers, comb, and shears are a unique combination of skill and art.

     These shops fascinate me! I love the freedom men feel at these places. The freedom to unwind, be themselves, and speak their minds. I I love the way a good hair cut makes me feel. Confident and put together. I love the nostalgia I feel while I’m there. Reminiscent of a different time when the world was smaller, things moved slower, and people cared about each other. I guess you could say I love everything about them.

     A few shops I’ve visited, researched, and loved over the last 2 years...

Greasy Hands Barbershop - Florence, AL 

The Commodore Tonsorial Parlor - Atlanta, GA 

Scout’s Barbershop - Nashville, TN 

Shed Barber & Supply - Austin, TX 

     Let’s hit pause here and rewind the tape a little (for those of you 18 and under reading this, ask your parents what rewind the tape means).  In 2008, Shannon and I moved from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham and almost immediately began attending The Church at Brookhills. We knew after the first week the Lord was moving in this church and He was going to move within us as well if we got onboard. We joined the church, got plugged into a small group (more on that later), and began “doing life” with the faith family there. The pastor was a skinny, jeans wearing, shirt untucked, blonde guy who looked more like a fraternity brother we’d seen in Tuscaloosa than a pastor of a “mega church”. His name was David Platt and he would change my life forever.

     I hope at some point on this blog to dive deeper into my own faith story, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll be succinct. Christ became my Savior at the age of 16, but there was very little spiritual growth until my early 20’s. That is, until we joined The Church at Brookhills. The Lord used this church, my small group, and David Platt to completely transform what I knew, or thought I knew, about surrendering my life to Christ.

     Let me preach a second here.

     Every day, I am made more and more aware of the “cultural Christianity” that surrounds me. Especially here in the deep south, asking someone if they’re a Christian is like asking them if they drink sweet tea. Well, yes of course. So many of our churches have preached the easiness of salvation and that all you have to do is “say this prayer, ask Jesus into your heart, and believe.” And that’s true. Sort of. The Bible is very clear that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). However, where I think many have dropped the ball is on the aftermath. I’ve “accepted” Christ. Now what? Pastor David now famously quoted this in one of his sermons during our time at Brookhills:

      “Accept Him? Do we really think Jesus needs our acceptance? Don’t we need Him? Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.”

     Surrender? What does that mean? David would say “giving the Lord a blank check with your life.” My new beloved pastor, Jamey Pruett, calls it “putting your yes on the table.” I like both analogies, but what do they really mean? This is where I feel many of us have missed the mark. This point, this crucial element for salvation is not being explained and driven home through discipleship in many churches. If Christ is your Savior, the Bible says you are a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come (1 Corinthians 5:17). And this “new creation” now has a new responsibility. Jesus cannot only be a “personal Lord and Savior”, but rather He is a Savior to whom we must completely submit and surrender control of our lives. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Or as we sing from the old Baptist Hymnal, “Wherever He leads, I’ll go.” And He asks us to do something very specific with that surrendering: make His name known among the nations. The Great Commission. Spread the Gospel. He’s not just your personal savior. He’s a savior worth living for. And if necessary, dying for.

     At this point you may be asking yourself “what in the name of Paul Mitchell does this all have to do with barbershops?” If you’ve read this far, stay with me. I promise I’m getting there.

     In 2010, Pastor David began preaching through a sermon series at Brookhills entitled “Radical”. He would also publish a New York Times best seller similarly themed and titled “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream.” This series and book ruined me. For the better. Let me just give you a few quotes from the book and I think you’ll get the gist:

     “Radical obedience to Christ is not easy. It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.”

     “We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”

     “But then I realized there is never going to be a day when I stand before God and He looks at me and says, ‘I wish you would have kept more for yourself.’ I’m confident that God will take care of me.”

     I read this book back to back with another book from a teacher and author who has also had an enormous impact on my life: John Piper. His book was called “Don’t Waste Your Life”. Let me also give you a quote from this book that has both challenged me and haunted me all at the same time:

     “Three weeks ago, we got word at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon.

The brakes give way, over the cliff they go, and they’re gone — killed instantly.

And I asked my people: was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great vision, spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ — two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on trifles in Florida or New Mexico. No. That is not a tragedy. That is a glory.

I tell you what a tragedy is. I’ll read to you from Reader’s Digest what a tragedy is. “Bob and Penny . . . took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their thirty foot trawler, playing softball and collecting shells.”

That’s a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you: don’t buy that dream. The American Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells as the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account of what you did: “Here it is Lord — my shell collection! And I’ve got a nice swing, and look at my boat!”

 Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.”

      I have spent countless hours and sleepless nights pondering that thought: How do I keep from wasting my life?

           The Lord used my pastor, my small group, and these books to help me process and understand something I somehow had missed over the course of my “church kid” life. I was not saved from my sin to live a selfish, care free life filled with comforts, trivial pursuits, and “stuff”. I was saved because the Father loved me infinitely and perfectly. And He wanted to me share this good news, this Gospel: that He loved the world enough to send His only Son as a ransom for sinners. Plain and simple. That was my purpose in life. That was my purpose for being created. To make the name of Jesus known far and wide.

           I’ve struggled over the years to know exactly what that’s supposed to look like. I’m a big believer in the Lord’s sovereignty and that He calls us to different jobs, different cities, different friends, etc for seasons where He expects us to do His work. But I’ve found myself questioning over the years, should I be doing more? If my life is truly being lived in complete submission to Christ, should I be working in vocational ministry? Should I go to seminary? Should I be on staff at a church? Should I work for a nonprofit ministry? Let me share with you what I believe the Lord has been teaching me through this season of questioning and searching.

           The Lord certainly uses vocational ministers to do His work. They are “called”, gifted, and uniquely led by the Holy Spirit to spread the Gospel. But God also uses “regular people” to do His work. Vocational ministry is not the calling for every believer. The gospel of Jesus Christ is spread every day by doctors, policemen, receptionists, construction workers, school teachers, and business professionals. It’s part of the beauty of this Christian life. The Lord in His goodness equips and uses all of His children to advance the kingdom.

      We’ve certainly taken the scenic route in this post, but we’re almost home. 

           The Lord has given me a vision for how I can serve Him and advance the Gospel in my community. Before you go and get Pentecostal on me, not that kind of vision. I was not struck with a blinding light, nor did I hear a voice from Heaven. Rather, He gave me comprehension. An understanding of who I am, what I’m passionate about, how He has gifted me, how He has equipped me, and how He wants me to use these things to serve Him:

I believe the Lord is calling me to open a business. Specifically, a barbershop.

           I could write another lengthy post on how the Lord has affirmed this to me over the last several months and I certainly plan to dive deeper into that at another time.  For now, I’ll give you just a couple of insights on how I’ve come to this conclusion:

1.)    Me: Who am I? Who has the Lord created me to be? How has He gifted me? I can answer that in a few sentences. I have been created as an extremely relational person. Relationships and people matter to me. A lot. I thrive on being around other people. I “come to life” you might say. I need meaningful friendships and conversation. When I go through seasons where my relationships are strained or stale, it changes me. I am at my best – my truest self – when I am in the fellowship and community of people I love.

Additionally, the Lord has given me the spiritual gifts of mercy and hospitality. Mercy – the ability to empathize with others. To be a listening ear. To care for and about people. Hospitality – hosting others in your space and creating a welcoming environment. Opening your home (or place of business) to others and shepherding them.

Practically, I have nearly 15 years’ experience in customer service and managing businesses. I understand the logistics that factor into running a successful business. And I love it. The job just suits me. Engaging customers and employees in conversations, listening to them, helping them solve a problem: the basic job description embodies who I am.

2.)    Community: Shannon and I moved to Arab for the purpose of living close to family and raising our children in the same kind of small town environment in which we were raised. The Lord had greater plans. We have fallen deeply in love with our church and our community. We feel like we belong here. And because we are certain this is where the Lord has planted us, I want to serve my community well. This business will be my base of operations from where I can invest in our community.

I heard a friend from college, Tim Milner, speak at a missions conference at our church last year. Tim is now a pastor in Huntsville and I though I can’t recall the entirety of his sermon, one point from his message spoke to me. Screamed at me might be a better way of putting it: As Christians, let’s not be so focused on reaching the Nations that we forget about our brothers and sisters down the street who need Christ. My Brookhills background had saturated me with an urgency for international missions, but the Lord spoke to me that night during Tim’s message and began softening my heart to the spiritual needs of the people of Arab. I love them and I want to create a business that attends to both their physical and spiritual needs.

      This post has gone much longer than I intended and I fear I may already lost some future readers, but I wanted to thoroughly explain my vision and my heart as best I could. I promise I will try to be more concise with future posts. So let me wrap it up. The goal of this blog, for those of you who care to follow, is to create a space where you can come alongside me in this journey. I am confident that the Lord has set me on this path, but that doesn’t mean I have all the answers. I desperately covet your prayers and wisdom as I strive to be faithful and obedient in this. Here are a few specific areas I would ask for your prayers:

-          Pray that the Lord would give me great wisdom as I explore the best avenue for barber training.

-          Pray that the Lord’s timing would be clear and that all logistics would fall into place according to His plan, not mine.

-          Pray the Lord would begin working in the heart of someone or multiple someones to serve alongside me in this venture.

-          Pray that I would continue to pray and cling to Proverbs 19:1. “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”

-          Pray that I would love my wife and children well and show them Jesus through this season of change.

-          Pray that ultimately Christ would receive all the glory and His name be exalted in all of this. 

Thankful for each of you. More to come soon…

Drew

[inhumansforever]

Ms. Marvel 19 Review

spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers

It’s the beginning of a brand new storyline in the pages of Ms. Marvel as illustrator, Marco Falla, joins G. Willow Wilson and Ian Herring for the start of an arc interestingly entitled ‘mecca.’  Full recap and review following the jump.

The tale begins with Kamala and her family preparing for their annual celebration of the first day of Eid Al-Adha.  Herein it’s shown that Aamir’s new bride, Tyesha is pregnant, meaning Kamala is to be an auntie in the not too distant future.  How exciting!  

Yet the merriment is cut short when they return home to see their street partially cordoned off by barriers and signs reading ‘bring back the real Jersey City.’  It’s not clear what exactly is going on, but it certainly looks like trouble… it would seem that a tide of divisiveness has swept over the city.  

The Khan family try not to let it all spoil their good time and continue on with their celebration.  Eid Al-Adha is the Festival of the Sacrifice and is a major holiday celebrated by Muslims all over the world.  The family prepare a huge feast for friends and family.  Kamala enjoys herself but cannot help but dwell on those disturbing signs and what exactly is going on with Jersey City.  Wanting to investigate the matter further, Kamala excuses herself saying she wants to take a walk after having eaten so much.  Her step-brother, Gabe, opts to go with her. While on their walk, Kamala and Gabe are approached by two suspicious looking customers in matching uniforms who introduce themselves as agents of the ‘Keepers of Integration Normalization and Defense’ agency or KIND for short.  These KIND agents are patrolling the neighborhood to enforce behavioral norms.  

The whole idea of it strikes Kamala as absurd and unconstitutional.  She states that Mayor Marchesi would never sanction such a thing.  The KIND agents inform her that Machesi has been unseated as mayor, fired by the city council in a closed session and replaced by Chuck Worthy.  

Worthy is a Hydra agent and former underling of Dr. Faustus who had run for Mayor several issues back.  The KIND agents refute this idea that mayor Worthy is associated with Hydra, stating that the whole notion is merely a smear campaign orchestrated by his political enemies.  

These agents add that they had been called to the neighborhood by citizens who had reported undocumented super-powered beings.  It all cuts Kamala like a knife.  The idea that her own neighbors would turn on her in this fashion is just crushing.  

Kamala has seen this particular brand of authoritarianism before and feels confident she knows exactly who is behind it all.  She barges off intent on meeting the threat head on.  

Having donned her Ms. Marvel outfit, Kamala arrives at the old detention facility that had once been run by the Carol Cadets back during the second superhero civil war.  Here she encounters ‘Basic’ Becky St. Jude.   Becky (who is now going by the name ‘Lockdown’) explains that she is no longer an outlaw, now she is the law.  

She works for Mayor Worthy and has every legal right to enforce her authoritarian ways.  Indeed the tables have turned and now it is Ms. Marvel who is the one operating outside the law.  Lockdown has her minion, a villain named ‘Discord,’ attack Kamala.  

This Discord appears to have some sort of electrical offensive powers, firing blast of energy at Ms. Marvel.  Kamala has been practicing her defensive dodges, utilizing her stretching powers to shift away from an attack in an efficient fashion.  At first she is quite excited that her practice has paid off and she is able to evade Discord’s attack with relative ease.   

Yet Discord seems familiar with the particular limits of Ms. Marvel’s abilities; he changes up tactics and ensnares her with rings of electrical energy.   Such high voltage burst of energy is something Ms. Marvel is vulnerable to; and Discord is able to defeat her.

It seems as though the mysterious Discord fellow is someone Kamala has encountered before.  Trapped in those energy rings, she asks him who he is.  He replies that perhaps he’ll answer the question but first he has a question of his own… and asks about the time in which Ms. Marvel fought against Chuck Worthy’s downtown development plan.  Discord asks Kamala what she saw when she first arrived on the scene?  It takes her a minute, but then it dawns on her that despite the clearly evil intensions of Worthy’s plan, there were indeed quite a few people there supporting him.  At the time, she just shrugged them off as easily manipulated stooges, but now she’s forced to realize that they were real people, people with real feelings and real concerns.  

Worthy was offering totalitarianism in exchange to keeping them safe.  Ms. Marvel fight against it because, to her, such a bargain is evil and unAmerican.  Yet it nerve quite dawned on her that there were a lot of people who felt the opposite, who very much wanted what Worthy was offering… and she disregarded them merely because she believed she was right, that she knew better.   And then Discord knocks her out.  

Meanwhile, Gabe rushes back home and alerts the others that there are these creepy KIND agents out there enforcing social norms and rounding up super powered beings.  Zoe has been the Khan’s guest for the Eid Al-Adha festivities.  She interrupts Gabe, expressing a fearful dismay that government agents are out there rounding up illegal immigrants!   Embarrassed by her outburst, Zoe explains that she was actually born in France and has never actually gone about naturalizing her citizenship.  

Aamir brushes off Gabe’s concern.  The family are all law abiding citizens and should have nothing to fear.  Mrs. Khan asks Aamir to bring the leftovers of their feast to a family down the street.  He complies, but on his way there is accounted by the KIND agents.  These agents identify Aamir as being an undocumented super-powered being.  Amir laughs it off.  He had only possessed powers for a short while, the results of an accident that have long since worn off.  The agents are unmoved by his explanation and haul him off to be processed, detained and who knows what else.  And it is with this harrowing turn of events that the issue ends with he promise of continuation in the next installment.  

Anyone expecting a lighter toned story-arc following the rather heavy DocX saga is sure to be surprised.  Wilson’s scripts just do not shy away from the important topics of the day, and ‘Mecca’ may very well be Ms. Marvel’s most pressing and germane tale to date.  

The gag where Zoe assumes the KIND agents are out rounding up undocumented immigrants made for funny bit, but also acted to underscore the metaphorical valance of the issue.  ‘Super powered beings’ in the issue is rather clearly just a stand-in for immigrants, specifically immigrants who are Muslim.  

The trump Administration’s so-called ‘travel ban’ has just recently been once more struck down by the ninth circuit court of appeals.  It’s now being fast-tracked to the Supreme Court.  This travel band is very much a poorly veiled Muslim ban and is as unconstitutional as it gets; yet there is still a chance that the Supreme Court will uphold presidential authority over immigration and allow the ban to go into effect.  A daunting, horrifying prospect. The constitutionality and amorality of such a ban notwithstanding, there is the simple truth that there is a sizable portion of the American public who would very much like to see it enacted.  The specter of terrorism has created an irrational fear toward people who are Muslim.  And many are quite will to give up civil liberties to take actions that they believe will better ensure their safety.  I don’t agree with them, but it is folly to just see them as an uninformed rabble.  They are real people with real feelings.  

Kamala is used to being loved.  She’s plucky and cheerful and wonderfully inspiring in her unwavering idealism.  It is surprising and terribly dismaying for her to realize that there are many people out there who fear her, who would feel much safer were she gone.  And this extends to the real world as well.  Ms. Marvel bursted onto the scene and was an immediate hit.  She was celebrated as the first major Muslim superhero and that, coupled with the amazingly high quality of her comic, made her an absolute darling of the progressive left.  Yet times have changed and the shift in political atmosphere in the states has very much emboldened people who have attitudes to the contrary to speak their minds.  And as one of the more visible Muslim characters of popular culture, Ms. Marvel (and her creators) has become the focus of a great deal of vicious and intolerant animus.  

Some may feel that it is inappropriate for G. Willow Wilson to incorporate all of this into once of her comics.  Who may think it better to keep comic books apolitical and just a man of escapism.  Yet I don’t blame her in the least.  How can she not think about things, not want to try to process and digest it all in her art?  Life and art always imitate one another, there’s really no way around it.

I’m curious about the story-arc being entitled ‘Mecca.’  Mecca with a capital ‘M’ is the capital of Hejaz, Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of The Prophet Muhammad and spiritual center of Islam.  Mecca with a lower case ‘M’ however can colloquially by used as any place in which a person very much wants to go, an idealized location.  The font utilized write out ‘Mecca’ at the beginning of the issue makes it impossible to tell if it is being written with an upper or lower case ‘M.’  It makes for a very intriguing ambiguity...

Recommended.  Four out of Five Lockjaws.  

[mastcomm]

Between Buhari, Adesina, and Gambari

Buhari and Gambari

By Femi Olufunmilade

“A story advised by an fool, stuffed with sound and fury, signifying nothing”. – William Shakespeare. This describes a marketing campaign of calumny within the type of an outdated article within the 12th July, 2008, concern of The Solar newspaper making the rounds on social media to place a wedge between the author, Femi Adesina, presidential spokesman, and Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, the brand new Chief of Employees to President Buhari.

The piece titled, “Gambari: The Slap Subsequent Time” was unsupportive of Gambari’s appointment to dealer peace between the Federal Authorities and the Niger Delta militants. He cited the professor’s stance on the trial and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa below the Abacha regime as not too clement to make him a becoming peace envoy to the Niger Delta area. Contemplating the reactions of the militants themselves to the thought, you can not however agree with Adesina’s place. That was below late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the creator of Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, and the extremely profitable Presidential Amnesty Programme within the Niger Delta.

The problem is, Adesina is just an expert journalist who owes the studying public his sincere views and he stays one until date. And so far as serving President Buhari is anxious, he’ll work easily with anybody, not the least somebody he disagreed with on only one concern in a fleeting context.

Adesina is a God-fearing man with sturdy convictions. He may have criticised anybody on a given concern in a specific context and time. It’s his entitlement as a free citizen of Nigeria inside his constitutional proper. Criticism shouldn’t be a criminal offense below the Nigerian regulation. Extra importantly, I do know for a indisputable fact that he accepted his place as Particular Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President not for love of excessive workplace. He wouldn’t have accepted it from Abacha had he transmuted to a civilian president earlier than God referred to as him abruptly!

Adesina is working with President Buhari as a matter of conviction within the patriotic mission and integrity of the person. I additionally know that first hand. In these years everybody knew I used to be the main publicist of Normal Muhammadu Buhari in our quest to get him elected as president, Adesina was unrivalled among the many media chiefs that lent us a serving to hand within the type of free commercials. Sure. Or, how do you describe a collection of promotional articles on a presidential candidate printed with my e mail and telephone numbers without charge?

Adesina believed in Buhari and he didn’t conceal it. He not solely printed my articles always, he additionally used his again web page column to write down promotional articles on the final. His boss then and proprietor of The Solar newspaper, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, as soon as advised me he had been approached by very prime leaders of the then ruling social gathering to sack him, which he rebuffed.

There was a day I submitted an article late to Adesina. I referred to as him on telephone concerning the probability of publishing it as there was a day between the submission and the deadline of political campaigns. He merely replied “Olorun a enjoyable wa se”, that means God would make a means for us. The subsequent day, he had it in print. That was in 2011. Lower than 72 hours or so to the presidential election, the piece titled “The Delusion of Buhari’s Non secular Fanaticism” was out.

Quick ahead to late 2014 on the day of APC presidential primaries. We had been hopeful and jittery on the similar time concerning the prospects of Normal Buhari rising the brand new social gathering’s candidate. We had rooted for CPC’s merger with the ACN, ANPP, and a faction of APGA and had succeeded – all for the emergence of Buhari as candidate. However now, there have been sturdy challengers like Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Engr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso, amongst others. We heard of big cash altering arms and so on. We had been fearful. All we had was the nice identify of our alternative for president. That was all we’ve been advertising and marketing and promoting for over a decade at each presidential election. We had no cash. The little we had was by no means to grease anyone’s palms. It was from our particular person pocket to pay our particular person resort and transport payments and so on. Our horde of social gathering brokers and marketing campaign floor’s surging crowds had been freewilling Buhari believers like me and Adesina. They weren’t paid however had been all too ready to go to any size to advertise and defend the Buhari for president challenge.

With bated breath, I penned a extremely persuasive article to sway delegates on the APC presidential primaries in Lagos to our aspect. I reached out to Adesina to hatch a technique. My piece initially titled “Buhari is APC’s Greatest Guess” was printed to coincide with the day of the presidential primaries on 10th December, 2014. Adesina had eliminated “Buhari” from the title to maintain the reader guessing who the caption “APC’s Greatest Guess” was referring to. A great tactic by a guru. He additional vacated his again web page column for the piece to make it seen within the arms of distributors who had flooded Lagos and atmosphere of the venue of the primaries with copies of The Solar newspaper. The remainder is historical past.

In essence, what issues is that Adesina is serving a person he believes in, strongly and unapologetically, and the person, in like measure, reciprocates confidence and belief in him. The day I joined him in Ibadan, three years in the past, for the burial of his elder sister, a professor of Theatre Arts, who had died in a street accident, in his grief, he was so overwhelmed by President Buhari’s emotional and monetary help that he advised me to search out time to specifically thank the president on behalf of his household.

President Buhari and Adesina are nice mates who deeply respect one another. For Buhari, Adesina is a bosom buddy united of their quest for a brand new Nigeria. When Adesina’s mum handed on within the days of our battle for his enthronement, Normal Buhari attended her burial. You may depend the occasions he had honoured anybody in that method in your fingertips. To underscore their bond, it might curiosity you to recall that Adesina was the very first particular person given appointment by President Buhari after he assumed workplace in 2015. I used to be notified as quickly as Adesina arrived at Transcorp Hilton Resort, Abuja. I went there speedily and there locked one another in a heat, emotional embrace. Victory finally!

I’m sure Adesina would discover it very straightforward to get together with Prof. Ibrahim Gambari as Chief of Employees as a result of they’re united of their resolve to offer the president the most effective of themselves. Adesina, being a cultured Yoruba man and a great Christian will respect and help Prof. Gambari not solely as a matter of responsibility however in conformity with cultural etiquettes of in accordance elders respect due our mother and father and, Biblically, as if serving God. Nothing will hinder that. Not any mischievous reference to an outdated article.

I’m fairly sure the article would haven’t any influence on Prof. Gambari’s angle to Adesina as a thoroughbred tutorial for whom criticism is a norm, and as a cosmopolitan world citizen who has waded by many troubled waters, in search of peace internationally throughout his stint as super-diplomat/ Beneath-Secretary Normal with the United Nations.

What number of occasions have we, his youthful colleagues, not requested our college students to reply a query on this vein: “Do a critique of Gambari’s Concentric Circles’ Mannequin of Overseas Coverage, with emphasis on conformity or in any other case of Nigeria’s international policymaking to the mannequin”.

I want each Prof. Gambari, our father, our instructor, and my brother, Adesina, a great working relationship within the service of President Buhari and Nigeria.

-Femi Olufunmilade is a  Professor at Igbinedion College, Okada.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com.ng/opinion/between-buhari-adesina-and-gambari/

[coeychewcd]

“The Designer as author”- by Michael Rock

Figure 1: Michael Rock

Michael Rock has published an article called “The designer as Author” in 1996. The article is majorly discussed about authorship, which has been changed in different ways especially in the field of design.

In the article, Michael Rock explores the concept of authorship that it has been difficult for the designers as they are most likely associated more with communication through design than presenting the real facts and message. Moreover, Rock continues explains the observation by Michel Foucault that the bond between the author and text has changed over the centuries. In the past, authorship had never been viewed as an important substance. However, the situation had changed. The connection between author and text was concerned and handle with care.

Michael Rock also includes evidences by Barthes that in Paris 1968, it is the year of students participated to joined workers on the barricades in a general strike and this kind of social revolution had interested the Western world. Unfortunately, it caused authority to lose its power in the form of the author in favor of the reader – i.e. the masses. The author also mentioned that the character of the author helps in taking control over creative activity and it is very practical element of high art. It also helps in building their reputation and status when they control well with their work. I believe that a person with a characteristic is highly possible that they will perform well as they understand themselves and confident on what they wanted to achieve in present and future. It is interesting that the author includes with a few examples to shows that authorship plays an important part in letting people who is the one that started with the creative works or projects. Thus, I think authorship helps in preventing people in faking works with an authorship and it is better to let people to practice in citing or ask permission to the author to work in similar projects.

On the other hand, Rock includes an exhibition entitled “ Designer as Author: Voices and Visions”. The purpose of began with this exhibition is to show graphic designers who are engaged in work that are basically presenting themselves which is more individual. Likewise, Michael Rock endures that authored design are most likely holds higher and stronger purpose that leads to more personal and creative.

The author also includes studies from Foucalt that the author is the one that provides individual sources and researches. Therefore, the author got the rights to stop reader to take advantages from the author. In my opinion, it is true that most people take benefits without authorizing the author or the designer. I also believe that designers also take the advantages of people’s work as an inspiration to further their work and it should explain to people where and who is the one that started with the project. Furthermore, to improve graphic authorship is to extravagant our historical frame. This helps in being seen as progressive and an involvement to the improvement of progressing design in the present and future.

From this article, I believe that authorship is definitely significant to any projects. It doesn’t matter if it is in design or writing because it involved in every works. It is unfair that people take advantages and did not credit author’s hard work in producing their projects.

I’ve chosen 2 examples to show existence designer that successfully being an author for their projects/work even though the author already listed a few of examples in the article.

Figure 2: Travis Knight (https://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/17/entertainment/travis-knight-creator/index.html)

One of my favorite animator is Travis Knight. He has worked and mainly producing stop-motion animation. His most successful stop-motion animation called Kubo and the two strings. He has presented his personal style and interest into a film with the help of his colleagues. Although I did not watch all of his stop-motion animation, Kubo and the two strings is very beautiful and amazing stop-motion animation. To produce this film, he had sculptured the scene, characters, characters’ expression, and more. He had become an author towards his work and also the idea of the story. Here is the video of Kubo and the two strings behind the scene.

Figure 3: Kubo and the two strings (Source: https://fee.org/articles/the-vendetta-against-love-a-review-of-kubo-and-two-strings/)

Figure 4: Kubo and the two strings (Source: https://geektyrant.com/news/breathtaking-trailer-for-laikas-samurai-film-kubo-and-the-two-strings )

Video: Kubo and the two strings behind the scene

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHyTYL1Z1aM

Another designer that I would like to introduce is Levi Jaya, an Indonesian graphic designer. He is an ordinary graphic designer that loves to illustrate. He was my classmate when I am studying in BA. He loves illustration alot and he posted his art work mostly on instagram. As you can see his illustration may look simple but he included with a lot of details on the character. I like how he illustrate character with his design style and nobody can mock his artwork. He had made himself as an author to his design work. 

Figure 5: Levi Jaya instagram

Figure 6: Levi Jaya instagram

Figure 7: Levi Jaya instagram

Figure 8: Levi Jaya instagram

Question: 

1. Why people did not authorise their designer/author and just used it as their project?

2. Do you think we should charge people when they steal people’s work by not authorising them?

[roguenewsdao]

Stones Are Crying Out (Part 1 of 3)

"If these remained silent, the stones would cry out."  -- Christ to the Pharisees, Luke 19:40

Let's start with the presumption that most of us are naturally repulsed when being told that we're not worthy of some gift because we're too stupid or too poor or just too undeserving. We now live in a period of history where we have seen the systematic dissolution of the middle class. We have this sense that everything we have held up as valuable - whether that be tangible commodities like gold or social norms like moral values - is under attack and being stolen from us by that elitist cabal so often referred to as the Babylonian Priesthood.

In the midst of all that erosion comes a futurist revolution in its mirror opposite: the act of creation as embodied in the rise of the Era of Artificial Intelligence. Now, mankind has experienced sudden technological leaps before. Think of the forward-thinking eruption in the period of Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and the three industrial revolutions sparked by the Enlightenment (steam power, electrical & oil power, and the computer age.) But the revolution that is bearing down on us now comes with a twist. Mankind has finally created, not just a sentient machine, but a machine that is itself capable of becoming a Creator in its own right. The Created has now produced a Creator.

That idea is encapsulated in this short video by Max Tegmark. We might muse: Is AI the last thing that humans will ever invent because, from this point forward, all future technological advancements will be led by The Machine? Have we now spoken to the universal quantum consciousness and declared: "Let us make AI in our image," and thus the whole cycle now repeats itself?

My blog here will pick up on this theme and inspect it from within the context of the very literal Babylonian Priesthood who set a particular chain of events in motion 2,500 years ago. It was Gary Bell's final radio broadcast on Toronto AM640 last month that briefly mentioned a statement on which I've been wanting to expand. The "Spaceman" mentioned that your Bible has been changed. He also asked aloud whether the Roman Catholic Church was itself a Kabbalist project.

Indeed, Spaceman was correct, but, fortunately, a handful of Bible publishers have been correcting that egregious error for a few hundred years. In spite of their efforts, there are powerful Gnostic agendas that have kept mainstream religious indoctrination steered by a criminal act of omission. It's starting to look as if this coming AI revolution and all that is implied along with it was the motive behind that journey.

This subject has been brewing in the back of my mind for many months. I debated with myself over whether the subject of a 2500-year-old scribal omission is relevant to the very real-world blogs that get posted here at Rogue Money, or perhaps the subject is too religious and too "preachy" to be posted in this arena. However, in light of the above idea that Man has now created a Creator, coupled with a statement that A.I. engineer Dr. Ben Goertzel made a few years ago, I decided to present this topic by trying to display that Biblical alteration in a secular wrapper rather than a religious one. In fact, I can see now that the rise of the entire Transhumanist revolution is coming fast and hard to attack your right to their "secret knowledge" of mankind's origins.

In a freely available documentary film entitled "Singularity or Bust," Dr. Ben Goertzel made these statements:

Consciousness and awareness is the base around which all else is formed. Different structures represent consciousness in different ways. If you're around Buddhists or people of other analogous spiritual traditions, they take this for granted. 

In the Middle Ages, they were talking about making a 'golem,' an intelligent person out of clay. It would walk around and talk to people. They were going to create its mind using alchemy or something. So the rational, scientific incarnation of it only started around the 1940's or so. 

(See the 17-minute mark of this video, below.)

By summoning the "golem" in his remarks above, Dr. Ben has, either wittingly or unwittingly, recalled the mysticism of the Kabbalah. Of course, the elephant in the room here is that the AI programmers keep telling us that the arrival of the Singularity is part of man's natural evolution, even though it is self-evident that the new AI creatures like Sophia are themselves a product of intelligent design. Sophia did not emerge from the primordial ooze and I would hope that Dr. Ben would be offended if anybody insisted that she did.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Judge

Before we dive into the history of the criminally-intentioned motives that altered the Bible, please allow me to set this up from a secular perspective:

Imagine there is a well-respected, important man who has a team of editors compiling his autobiography. Let's suppose the man spent his life as a Supreme Court judge and his career was quite successful with many beneficial precedents having been set by his decisions. Most people in society regard him with affection. Naturally, the criminals who received the blunt edge of his decisions are not so enthralled with him. For the purpose of this metaphor, let's say his name is Judge Thomas and the book he's writing is called "The Bench."

He and his team of editors complete the book and give it wide circulation. The narrative is written in the third-person but Judge Thomas has made it quite personable and compelling. Within the narrative, he makes it clear that he wants people to know him by his name, to understand where "he's coming from," and what the purpose of his actions has always been. He even invites people to get to know him personally once they read the book. He invites his readers to get in touch with him. People love him so much that they even name their children after him in different variations of his name "Judge Thomas."

At first, things go pretty well after publication. However, gradually, a handful of people who blamed the Judge for their sufferings embarked on an agenda to keep people from reading the book and from getting to know Judge Thomas. They regarded the Judge as an evil man and wanted the whole world to believe that too. But they had to do this very stealthily because most people still respected the judge. How do you get people to turn against a person they respect? They did it by taking advantage of the people's own respect for this man. They softly began spreading the notion that this man was so highly respected that it was better not to use his name aloud lest you accidentally besmear his reputation.

Respected elders and teachers within the community began substituting his name "Judge Thomas" for the generic title "the Judge" whenever anybody talked about the man. After a couple of hundred years, people couldn't even remember what his original name was. A couple of hundred years after that, they couldn't even remember if the Judge had been a real person or whether his life story was just some pleasant fictional allegory.

During all this time, his book "The Bench" continued to be copied and translated widely. Some copies began applying the elders' objection regarding the verbal pronunciation of his name to the printed publication of his name as well. Many newly published versions were still faithful to the first edition and did continue publishing his full name "Judge Thomas" in its rightful places. However, some versions did not. A new trend began to evolve where his personal name was getting erased altogether and substituted with impersonal titles like the word "Judge" by itself or even slightly demeaning words like "Mister" and "Bossman."

Judge Thomas had a son, Tommy Jr., who was very concerned about this trend. His father, Judge Thomas, left it up to the people to decide for themselves whether they would get to know him or not, and whether they would defend his reputation or not. The Judge saw to it that some pristine versions of his autobiography would always be available. But his son, Tommy Jr., was moved to stand up in defense of his father. He spent a few years reminding people who his father was and why they should get to know him. 

In the end, that small handful of elite leaders who hated Judge Thomas couldn't get Tommy Jr. to shut up. So they murdered him. Fortunately, a small group of people believed that Tommy Jr. was right and picked up where he left off. They understood that the Judge's reputation was under attack. A social issue like that can't be resolved with some phenomenal demonstration of power. Nor can it be resolved by the Judge issuing some kind of manifesto or even by publishing a follow-up book; that would just make him look more suspect. The only way to resolve a social issue like that is to see if anybody who knows him will come to his defense. When the defense has been made strongly enough, the case can then be closed and the criminals can receive a fair and just sentence for their criminal acts of omission of the author's name from his own autobiography and resultant slander to that author's reputation. 

At this point, you likely can recognize the metaphor in the above illustration. The book "The Bench" is an allusion to one of mankind's oldest books, The Bible. The personal name "Judge Thomas" is an allusion to the personal name of God as it used to be copied in the oldest versions of the Bible. The son of the Judge is meant to represent Jesus Christ, who, ironically, actually told a similar story himself but used the metaphor of vineyard cultivator instead of the judge character that I have chosen. It is a simple tale that you can find in any Bible at Mark, chapter 12, if you'd like to read it separately (or online here, for example).

Scholars usually refer to the Bible's imprint of the Divine Name as the Tetragrammaton and it is often spelled with four consonants as "YHWH" or "JHVH" or even some other way common in thousands of languages across the globe. Regardless of how one spells it, the story of how that singularly important name came to be erased from the very book that was intended to make it known has a bearing on the Artificial Intelligence revolution that is currently underway.

Only the Most Holy Need Apply

Kabbalah is a belief system that seems to crop up wherever we look. It is one component of a package of other philosophy systems that includes the Hermetica and Gnosticism. In fact, the word "Kabbalah" did not really come into common use until the 12th century A.D., just before the period when the powerful Medici banksters saw fit to begin circulating the "newly discovered" library of ancient books that we refer to today as Hermeticism. As I've mentioned in a much older blog about the Mystical Zero, the Kabbalist/Hermetic revolution of thought in western society took off like a rocket as soon as the Arabic number system was introduced along with this new, esoteric idea that there was such a thing as a "Zero" and "Negative Numbers". Once that New Math was introduced, the foundation of the future Digital Age was laid.

In the extreme levels of Kabbalistic teaching - and yes there are levels in this belief system that even orthodox Jews are at odds with - the cabal of literal Babylonian priests who led its development began to engage in a campaign designed to assist the student to become one's own god. Consider this quote from a well-respected Kabbalah instructional site and think how this resonates with today's current headlong rush into AI Singularity:

Using Kabbalah, we can work with the fundamental forces of reality-reception and bestowal-to our benefit. It doesn’t only teach us the design of creation, but how we can become designers, as omnipotent and as omniscient as the original Designer of reality.

In the sacred writings that many today refer to as the "Old Testament," the personal name of the Creator was originally published over 5,000 times in those scrolls. Fragments of very old manuscripts of the people have been found that show that name being copied in a very ancient paleo-Hebrew script. In modern Hebrew, the four consonants are understood to be "YHWH". When transliterated into the German and English languages, the four letters become "JHVH". Other languages transliterate the same letters according to their lingual custom.

"The ancient Jews considered God's true name so potent that its invocation conferred upon the speaker tremendous power over His creations."  -- Wikipedia article "True Name"

The exact pronunciation of that name is debated but the meaning of the name is quite dynamic and is understood to be something along the lines of "He Causes To Become," a clause that emphasizes the creative ability of the owner of that name. The significance of that nomenclature will become self-evident in the context of the booming revolution now being led by Artificial Intelligence.

For hundreds of years, the use of the Tetragrammaton was cast aside as scholars and Bible publishers willingly went along with a Jewish tradition that insisted that we common, ordinary folk were not holy enough to use it. However, as archaeological discoveries came to light during the past 200 years or so, it became obvious that the ancient people of the Middle East most certainly did not feel that way. Furthermore, the pronunciation and proper use of that name was a regular custom, not just among the Israelites, but even among surrounding nations. When the Mesha Stele, or Moabite Stone, among other discoveries, was uncovered in 1868, the artificial barriers that had been created two thousand years previously to prevent people from connecting with their Creator began to crumble. The stones literally were crying out!

At the same time in that late 19th century, today's modern "mystery schools," centers of higher education, were busy pumping out the scientists and innovators destined to bring on the ethereal, digital age in which we now find ourselves. The race was on to bring that "court case" that I referred to above in my "Judge Thomas" metaphor to a conclusion.

How a Name Got Defamed

After the death of King Solomon around the year 900 B.C.E., and not long after the above Moabite Stone was inscribed, an elite strata of teachers from among the Israelites wanted a divorce from their covenant with YHWH. They began to look longingly towards the ancient wisdom of their northern neighbors, the Assyrians and Babylonians, descendants of the Sumerian tradition, for a way to achieve their own brand of godship. As a result of the Diaspora of 607 B.C.E. and destruction of Solomon's temple, other rabbinic leaders made their way to Alexandria, Egypt and likewise began adopting the nouveau Hellenized Egyptian traditions. This Wikipedia article on the subject of "Tetragrammaton" explains that the teachers who had once been entrusted with teaching the people the truth about the God of their covenant, and keeping the dynamic meaning of his name alive, actually began to lead them away from it:

Some time after the destruction of Solomon's Temple, the spoken use of God's name as it was written ceased among the people, even though knowledge of the pronunciation was perpetuated in rabbinic schools. The Talmud relays this occurred after the death of Simeon the Just (either Simon I or his great-great-grandson Simon II). Philo calls it ineffable, and says that it is lawful for those only whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to hear and utter it in a holy place (that is, for priests in the Temple). In another passage, commenting on Lev. xxiv. 15 seq.: "If any one, I do not say should blaspheme against the Lord of men and gods, but should even dare to utter his name unseasonably, let him expect the penalty of death."

Rabbinic sources suggest that the name of God was pronounced only once a year, by the high priest, on the Day of Atonement. Others, including Maimonides, claim that the name was pronounced daily in the liturgy of the Temple in the priestly benediction of worshippers (Num. vi. 27), after the daily sacrifice; in the synagogues, though, a substitute (probably "Adonai") was used. According to the Talmud, in the last generations before the fall of Jerusalem, the name was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in the chant of the priests. Since the destruction of Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the tetragrammaton has no longer been pronounced in the liturgy. However the pronunciation was still known in Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century.

"Lawful only for those with purified ears and tongues." As you can imagine, every time somebody starts promoting an elitist view like that, bad consequences are bound to ensue. And so it happened that the ordinary people were meticulously led away from benefiting from a personal relationship with their Creator through an indoctrination process designed to make them feel dirty and unworthy of knowing Yahweh. But that wasn't all. What is even more sinister is that the upper crust of these elites "hoarded" this sacred name for themselves with the intent of using it as a key towards the acquisition of ultimate knowledge and power.

This Wikipedia article on the topic of "True Name" says this about the Kabbalah theft of God's personal name:

The true name of God plays a central role in Kabbalism (see Gematria, Temurah, YHWH [the tetragrammaton]) and to some extent in Sufism (see 100th name of God). The ancient Jews considered God's true name so potent that its invocation conferred upon the speaker tremendous power over His creations. To prevent abuse of this power, as well as to avoid blasphemy, the name of God was always taboo, and increasingly disused so that by the time of Jesus their High Priest was supposedly the only individual who spoke it aloud — and then only in the Holy of Holies upon the Day of Atonement.

By the time Christ arrived on the scene, the personal Tetragrammaton name of his Father was rarely verbalized. However, it continued to be written in the scrolls of the ancient books, such as the writings of Isaiah and the Psalms, from which Christ would frequently quote. 

As a matter of fact, that man Philo was a prominent Jewish teacher in Alexandria, Egypt at the time that Joseph and Mary fled Judea with their infant son Jesus. For all we know, the adult teacher and the young child could have met each other. Nevertheless, we can be sure that Philo's ideas did not rub off on the future rabbi and Messiah. During Christ's 3 1/2 year ministry, he made it clear repeatedly that his Father's name should be hallowed, or sanctified, even to the point of including this as item #1 in the "Lord's Prayer." In the week that would lead up to his assassination, even Christ's followers had cast off the elite's prohibition against  uttering God's personal name, as referenced in the quotation at the top of this blog.

On the occasion when Christ entered Jerusalem seated on a donkey, the event that is ritualized every year by Christendom's observance of Palm Sunday, Christ's followers immediately sparked the ire of the elite establishment by greeting the future king with words recorded a thousand years previously in one of the Psalms:

37 And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; 

38 Saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the LORD: (Jehovah Psa 118:26 ) peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. 

- Divine Name King James Bible, Luke 19:37.38

And we can be sure that Christ's followers would have spoken all of the words correctly, uttering the divine YHWH aloud because the scroll copies that they had in the first century were still faithful to the original intent. Also, the following two verses show that the Pharisees demanded that Christ order his disciples to shut up. Those disciples must have been saying something to make the Pharisees mad!

39 But some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!” 

40 “I tell you, He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.” 

41 As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it.

- The Study Bible, Luke 19:39-40

It is no wonder that Christ wept over the city. This beacon of light had now become a pit of dense darkness. The city that had once been entrusted with keeping alive God's name and God's original purpose for the Earth had now gone completely off the rails. A few days later, Christ would add the proverbial straw to break the camel's back when he restored the life of his dead friend Lazarus, promising to do that same thing for all people who have died. That was a step too far for these elites whose control over the masses was now threatened by a young, handsome rabbi who was bound and determined to honor the name and knowledge of his Father. 

The elites displayed their influence over the Roman status quo by getting Christ executed. 37 years later, their "house," their temple, literally was abandoned to them as the Cabal chose, once and for all, to break their covenant in favor of the new power they had carefully developed over all the kings of the West, the power of a different type of creation that would precede Artificial Intelligence, that is, the power of money creation. Couple that control over the West's monetary system with the ability to divulge or suppress esoteric knowledge traditions at will, and you have the tools you need to drive the productive labors of mass populations along a hidden agenda.

However, that wasn't quite enough to kill the memory of God's personal, dynamic name. And the Cabal wasn't finished either.

(For the sake of brevity, this blog will be continued shortly. Stay tuned!)

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