#integrity 2019 movie

[kajillionaires]

have been in such a funk lately bc i went to go see barbie and was hoping to have that gut wrenching experience most girls seem to be having n i simply did not feel it idk. like i don’t think it was bad or anything n the message was nice enough but idk the whole movie felt too … commercial i guess. and too self aware of that to be entirely genuine. don’t get me wrong it was visually stunning and a fun watch, but elicited the same emotional response as a coca cola commercial, at least from me.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 8/20/2024

a little light this week bc i had a fairly wretched week, medically speaking

listening

hozier's nobody's soldier would have been on every 8tracks mix for every character. THEEEEE blorbo song of all time to the point i am already annoyed at the thought of seeing it on every spotify mix. fuckin owns tho. very fun mod sixties heist taste to the horn arrangement

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reading

thank you philip.

polished off the Marauders (2019-2022) comics. i liked the first volume way more than these three-- they didn't quite deliver the same quality of art or swashbuckles-per-minute. also this was probably not a great choice for someone who has forgotten what little she once knew about the xmen, even though they came at the beginning of a reboot.

why did i read these? mostly bc they were readily available or with short wait times at my library and my bestie is making me watch all the xmen movies. a girl gets curious about comic books sometimes

surprisingly, i came across this one from the Pocket integration on the firefox new tabs

McDonald likens the functions of Spotify to Google Maps. “Google Maps doesn’t do the exploration for me, but it’s helpful if I go somewhere,” he says. Rather than taking us on guided tours, it provides the tools for us to navigate somewhere new. Much as it shows us what’s nearby and how to get there, and flags notable landmarks others have visited, Spotify helps us access most music, lists global listening trends, and introduces us to artists similar to those we already know. But it’s communities that help us home in on a destination Spotify can help us explore.

part two of breaking down infamous academic paper mill Hindawi and why it was bought by Wiley anyway bc they did seemingly no due diligence, bc as a whole they do very little actual work in the publishing process.

i have included a very long quote bc it is one of only two things that made me genuinely laugh out loud this week (the other was phil unsticking a claw from the couch by backflipping herself out)

One issue of Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing from 2022, edited mostly by Hamurabi Gamboa Rosales, took an average of about 20 days to go from initial submission to revision submission. This is not unlikely, it’s impossible. The easiest way to explain this is with an analogy. Say there’s a pothole outside your house, and you call the council. You tell them ‘there’s a big hole in the road outside my house!’ The person at the other end, rather than tiredly telling you to fill out a form - which is what councils do all over the world, in my experience - instead yells ‘MOTHER OF GOD! WE’RE RIGHT ON IT!’ Twenty minutes later, a bitumen truck comes HURTLING around the corner of your street at full send, with the road workers hanging out the back of it, the driver leaning on the horn and yelling ‘GET OUT OF THE WAY! POTHOLE!’ They pull up outside your house, and you see the brakes go hot. But the guys don’t even wait for it to stop, they jump off while it’s slowing down, and they grab pry bars and a burner and a kettle of bitumen, and they start hammering out the edges, pour the bitumen and start slamming it with hammers almost at the same time. In about six minutes, the hole is filled and flattened, and they admire their work for about four hundred milliseconds and SCREAM off the way they came. No sooner has the truck disappeared, then your phone rings - and it’s the council worker from before. ‘POTHOLE! *pant* *pant* FIXED! Happy to be of service!’ *click* That’s how likely the entire editorial process taking 20 days is.

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watching

i don't understand why the third xmen movie isn't named x cubed. it extremely is not their last stand there are like a dozen more movies to go. gun to my head i could not tell you what happened in this one. whatsherface did look good as hell though

and now for the movie i actually want to talk about, Monkey Man (2024, dir. Patel). imdb says:

An anonymous young man unleashes a campaign of vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to systematically victimize the poor and powerless.

i am so so so lucky that my favorite kind of fight scene — fast, brutal, right spaces with improvised weapons-- is fashionable. pour it DIRECTLY into my open mouth

i think i generally agree with a broad sweep of reviewers here when i tell you that this movie is gorgeous and grossnasty at the same time, there are a lot of ideas that aren't all quite resolved, and i am much more interested in why it has a hell of a lot of ideas (part of why they don't all get resolved).

patel's first movie, it feels very much like a movie of someone who isn't sure they'll be able to do another one, so throw everything you've got in here. a sort of famously rocky production and shoestring budget, but you would not know it. the club scenes are especially dripping in glitz and, like many stage productions, have a lot of clever editing and strategic deployment of mirrors and repeats. there's a fight scene with hanging mirrors near the end where the mirrors can't have been more than fifty bucks each but it looks SO fucking sick.

i am much more willing to go to bat for this movie and ignore some of the rough edges bc it is so refreshingly earnest, and despite the style references, is very focused on being its own thing. at some points it's going to feel like The Matrix (1999, dir. the Wachowskis) bc every movie made in a post- The Matrix (1999, dir. the Wachowskis) world is going to feel a little bit like The Matrix (1999, dir. the Wachowskis). or like when the above gif happened in the movie it did not make me want to turn it off and go watch the first john wick.

people who live in india or are part of the diaspora are a little cranky about the political parties of the film, which had to be neutered for release. while i don't think i would have grasped all the nuances even if we did have the original cut, i think it's likely some of the characters would have resolved a little cleaner if that original intent was still there.

why did i watch this? i think patel is easily as hot as tumblr darling mifune. while drafting this post i got distracted sooooooo many times trying to pick the perfect gif. some of them are too hot!!!

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playing

fallow week

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making

just stayin alive! just livin the fuckin dream!!!

[crownedinkcomix]

Joker 2 is not about its fandom. At least not on purpose.

I agree with many of the criticisms leveled at Joker 2, and I almost didn’t bother writing this review since much of what I have to say echoes the general consensus. However, there’s one particular critique I’ve seen that I strongly disagree with: the idea that Joker 2 is a repudiation of the audience that connected with the first movie.

Many have argued that the sequel turns against those who found resonance in Arthur Fleck’s transformation into the Joker, especially as the character became a symbol in real-world political protests, much like the Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta was co-opted by Anonymous. But I believe this interpretation misses a key point that aligns with the themes of the original film.

The film becomes more engaging towards the end, particularly when Arthur’s followers reject him once he rejects the Joker persona. Some argue that this mirrors the way audiences connected with the first movie, using the Joker persona as a symbol during protests. However, this rejection of Arthur is consistent with the character’s portrayal in Joker (2019). Society didn’t care about Arthur as a person—an isolated, mentally ill individual—until he accidentally became a figurehead for a movement he never believed in. His followers, like society, only care about the Joker as a symbol, something they can project their own ideas onto.

While I don’t think Joker 2 is a strong film overall—it’s messy, and at best deserves a 2/5 rating—I do think it captures this idea well. It continues the theme that society values icons and symbols over real, complex individuals, much as the first film did.

Unfortunately, the first two-thirds of the film are a slog. The musical numbers, for example, add nothing of substance and slow the film to a crawl. I typically enjoy musicals, but Joaquin Phoenix is a poor singer, and the songs don’t advance the plot like they should in a good musical. Instead, they feel like pointless interludes. In the best musicals, songs are integral to storytelling, not interruptions.

The connections to Batman mythology, which were subtle but effective in the first Joker, feel more forced and distracting in this film. In Joker (2019), Gotham felt like Gotham, and there were enough subtle nods to Batman’s lore to justify the film's title. Here, however, it feels as though someone simply took an original screenplay and used a Find and Replace tool to rename elements: Arkham Asylum, Harvey Dent—they feel shoehorned in. Especially jarring is the fact that we're supposed to believe a character's Christian name is Harley Quinn (harlequin, get it?) in what is meant to be a world that is so grounded, I can't buy Bruce Wayne ever even grows up to be Batman in this continuity.

In the first film, even though Arthur Fleck’s story was largely inspired by Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, it still included some elements from The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns, giving it a legitimate connection to the Batman universe. The riot at the end, leading to the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, was a clever tie-in to Batman’s origin, even if it required some suspension of disbelief regarding the age difference between Bruce Wayne and this version of the Joker.

Joker 2 is ultimately a confused film that doesn’t know what it wants to say for much of its runtime. While it offers some interesting thematic continuity regarding society’s elevation of fictional personas over real people, it’s bogged down by poor pacing, weak musical numbers, and forced connections to Batman lore. While I’m glad I saw it for the final third, which genuinely resonated with me, I can’t recommend it to a general audience.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Abstract

Objective: To assess the association between transgender or gender-questioning identity and screen use (recreational screen time and problematic screen use) in a demographically diverse national sample of early adolescents in the U.S.

Methods: We analyzed cross-sectional data from Year 3 of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM Study (ABCD Study®, N = 9859, 2019-2021, mostly 12-13-years-old). Multiple linear regression analyses estimated the associations between transgender or questioning gender identity and screen time, as well as problematic use of video games, social media, and mobile phones, adjusting for confounders.

Results: In a sample of 9859 adolescents (48.8% female, 47.6% racial/ethnic minority, 1.0% transgender, 1.1% gender-questioning), transgender adolescents reported 4.51 (95% CI 1.17-7.85) more hours of total daily recreational screen time including more time on television/movies, video games, texting, social media, and the internet, compared to cisgender adolescents. Gender-questioning adolescents reported 3.41 (95% CI 1.16-5.67) more hours of total daily recreational screen time compared to cisgender adolescents. Transgender identification and questioning one's gender identity was associated with higher problematic social media, video game, and mobile phone use, compared to cisgender identification.

Conclusions: Transgender and gender-questioning adolescents spend a disproportionate amount of time engaging in screen-based activities and have more problematic use across social media, video game, and mobile phone platforms.

Introduction

Screen-based digital media is integral to the daily lives of adolescents in multifaceted ways [1] but problematic screen use (characterized by inability to control usage and detrimental consequences from excessive use including preoccupation, tolerance, relapse, withdrawal, and conflict) [2], [3], has been linked with harmful mental and physical health outcomes, such as depression, poor sleep, and cardiometabolic disease [4], [5]. Transgender and gender-questioning adolescents (i.e., adolescents who are questioning their gender identity) experience a higher prevalence of bullying (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR] 1.88 and 1.62), suicide attempts (aPR 2.65 and 2.26), and binge drinking (aPR 1.80 and 1.50), respectively, compared to their cisgender peers [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. Transgender and gender-questioning adolescents may engage in screen-based activities that are problematic and associated with negative health outcomes but also in a way that is different from their cisgender peers in order to form communities, explore health education about their gender identity, and seek refuge from isolating or unsafe environments [11].

One study found that sexual and gender minority (SGM) adolescents (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender), aged 13–18 years old, spent an average of 5 h per day online, approximately 45 min more than non-SGM adolescents in 2010–2011 [12]. However, this study grouped SGM together as a single group, conflating the experiences of gender minorities (e.g., transgender, gender-questioning) with those of sexual minorites (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual), and the data are now over a decade old. In a nationally representative sample of adolescents aged 13–18 years old in the U.S., transgender adolescents had higher probabilities of problematic internet use than cisgender adolescents. However, this analysis did not measure modality-specific problematic screen use such as problematic social media, video game, or mobile phone use, which may further inform the function that media use plays in the lives of gender minority adolescents [13]. While this prior research provides important groundwork to understand screen time and problematic use in gender minority adolescents, gaps remain in understanding differences in screen time and specific modalities of problematic screen use in gender minority early adolescents.

Our study aims to address the gaps in the current literature by studying associations between transgender and gender-questioning identity and screen time across several modalities including recreational and problematic social media, video game, and mobile phone use in a large, national sample of early adolescents. We hypothesized that among early adolescents, transgender identification and questioning one’s gender identity would be positively associated with greater recreational screen time and problematic screen use compared to cisgender identification.

==

tl;dr: Gender-mania is an online social contagion.

No shit. That's why these "authentic selves" and "innate identities" tend to evaporate when kids are detoxed from the internet.

[nosanime]

BIBLIOGRAPHY - “ANIME FOODIES: LAID-BACK CAMP THE MOVIE”

This is the bibliography for our entry in the Anime Foodies series of panels, “Anime Foodies: Laid-Back Camp The Movie”.  The sources include not only places from which we garnered background of the food we were cooking, but also sources that helped us determine how to craft our own version of the recipes we were creating.

This is the second Anime Foodies panel which has a formal bibliography of sources.  Those marked with double asterisks are regular sources we’ve used in all of the panels in the series and are a good starting point for anyone interested in Japanese food and its history.

Bibliography:

Afro. Laid-Back Camp. Vol. 6, Yen Press, 2019.

Afro. Laid-Back Camp. Vol. 7, Yen Press, 2019.

“Anethum graveolens L.” Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:837530-1.

Baker, Liren. “Taco Rice: Okinawa Taco Rice” Kitchen Confidante, https://kitchenconfidante.com/taco-rice-okinawa-taco-rice.

“Braised Yuba (Tofu Skins) with Vegetables” Sunberry Jam, https://sunberryjam.com/braised-yuba-with-vegetables/.

“Buttered Beere 1588” Oakden, https://oakden.co.uk/buttered-beere-1588/.

“Dutch Oven Roast Chicken” Self-Proclaimed Foodie, https://selfproclaimedfoodie.com/dutch-oven-roasted-chicken/#wprm-recipe-container-33149.

“Dutch Oven Roasted Chicken with Vegetables” Camping Adventures, https://adventures.camp/dutch-oven-roasted-chicken-with-vegetables/.

“Finnish Salmon Soup (Lohikeitto)” Skinny Spatula, https://skinnyspatula.com/salmon-soup-lohikeitto/.

Friesen, Katy June. “Where Did the Taco Come From?” Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/where-did-the-taco-come-from-81228162/.

Greg. “Hot Buttered Rum 2 Ways AND Fat Washing! | How to Drink.” YouTube, uploaded by How To Drink, 23 Nov. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCbEwyntSCM.

“Hokkaido Salmon Hot Pot (Ishikari Nabe) 石狩鍋” Just One Cookbook, https://www.justonecookbook.com/salmon-hot-pot/.

“Hoto Noodle Soup from Yamanashi ほうとう” Just One Cookbook, https://www.justonecookbook.com/hoto-noodle-soup-yamanashi/#wprm-recipe-container-79243.

“Hōtō Noodle Soup (Hōtō Nabe)” RecipeTin Japan, https://japan.recipetineats.com/hoto-noodle-soup-hoto-nabe/.

“Houtou (ほうとう)” Food in Japan, https://www.foodinjapan.org/kanto/yamanashi/houtou/.

“How to make Houtou – Yamanashi local speciality noodle dish recipe” Japanese Cooking Class Tokyo, https://japanesecookingclasstokyo.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/how-to-make-houtou-yamanashi-local-speciality-noodle-dish-recipe/.

“How to Make the Best Tempura 天ぷら” Just One Cookbook, https://www.justonecookbook.com/tempura-recipe/.

Hua, Charlie. “Kiritanpo: Trying out one of Akita’s local specialties” Japan Travel, https://en.japantravel.com/akita/kiritanpo/55809.

“Hypomesus olidus” FishBase, https://fishbase.de/summary/Hypomesus-olidus.html.

“Hypomesus olidus” Integrated Taxonomic Information System – Report, https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=162031#null.

**Ishige, Naomichi. The History and Culture of Japanese Food. London, Kegan Paul Limited, 2001.**

“"Ishikari" Salmon Hot Pot (Ishikari nabe)” NHK World – Japan, https://web.archive.org/web/20201101192650/https://www.nhk.or.jp/dwc/food/recipe/kyou_12310.html.

“Ishikari Nabe Recipe (Salmon and Miso Hot Pot in Hokkaido)” Cooking With Dog, https://cookingwithdog.com/recipe/ishikari-nabe/.

“Japan-Mexico Relations (Basic Data)” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/latin/mexico/data.html.

“Kiritampo Nabe (Rice Stick Hot Pot)” NHK World, https://web.archive.org/web/20180318093216/http://www.nhk.or.jp:80/dwc/recipes/detail/138.html.

“Kiritanpo (きりたんぽ)” Food in Japan, https://www.foodinjapan.org/tohoku/akita/kiritanpo/.

Laid-Back Camp. Directed by Yoshiaki Kyougoku. C-Station, 2018.

Laid-Back Camp Season 2. Directed by Yoshiaki Kyougoku. C-Station, 2021.

Laid-Back Camp The Movie. Directed by Yoshiaki Kyougoku. C-Station, 2022.

Miller, Max. “Making 400 Year Old Buttered Beere.” YouTube, uploaded by Tasting History with Max Miller, 10 Mar. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlMhZvOX2ps.

“Motsunabe” Japanese food style, https://jpnfood.com/recipe/meat/motsunabe.

“Motsunabe: How to Eat and the Best Restaurants in Fukuoka” Savor Japan, https://savorjapan.com/contents/discover-oishii-japan/motsunabe-how-to-eat-and-the-best-restaurants-in-fukuoka/.

“Motsunabe recipe もつ鍋” The Japanese Food Lab, https://thejapanesefoodlab.com/motsunabe/.

“Motsunabe (もつ鍋)” Food in Japan, https://www.foodinjapan.org/kyushu/fukuoka/motsunabe/.

“Okinawa Taco Rice and Cheese (Cafe Style)” Sudachi Recipes, https://sudachirecipes.com/okinawa-taco-rice/.

“Okinawa Taco Rice (Video) タコライス” Just One Cookbook, https://www.justonecookbook.com/taco-rice/.

“Recipe of Speedy Lightly Flavored! Hakata-style Motsunabe (Offal Hot Pot) with Soy Sauce Based Soup” Ground-Skillet, https://ground-skillet.web.app/734-recipe-of-speedy-lightly-flavored-hakata-style-motsunabe-offal-hot-pot-with-soy-sauce-based-soup/.

“Salmon Hot Pot (Ishikari Nabe)” RecipeTin Japan, https://japan.recipetineats.com/salmon-hot-pot-ishikari-nabe/.

“Salmon Soup” Happy Foods Tube, https://www.happyfoodstube.com/salmon-soup/.

Sam. “Aburi Technique for Fish” Chef Epic, https://chefepic.com/aburi-technique-for-fish/.

“Seared Salmon Sushi (Aburi)” Cooking with Cocktail Rings, https://cookingwithcocktailrings.com/seared-salmon-sushi-aburi/.

**Singleton Hachisu, Nancy. Japanese Farm Food. Kansas City, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2012.**

**Singleton Hachisu, Nancy. Preserving the Japanese Way. Kansas City, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2015.**

“【Smelt Tempura】 How to make Smelt tempura With technical explanation to stand fins” YouTube, uploaded by 逢禅天ぷらチャンネル / AIZEN TEMPURA CHANNEL 1 Oct. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3KTXNGGAL4.

“Soy Milk Hot Pot 豆乳鍋” Just One Cookbook, https://www.justonecookbook.com/soy-milk-hot-pot-tonyu-nabe/.

“Taco Rice (タコライス)” No Recipes, https://norecipes.com/okinawa-taco-rice/.

“Tentsuyu” Oishi Washoku Recipes, https://www.oishi-washoku-recipes.com/tentsuyu.

“‘Tentsuyu’ (Tempura Dipping Sauce)” Hiroko’s Recipes, https://www.hirokoliston.com/tentsuyu-tempura-dipping-sauce/.

Turkell, Michael Harlan. “Foil Yaki Is the Best” Taste, https://tastecooking.com/foil-yaki-best/.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wakasagi (Hypomesus nipponensis): Ecological Risk Screening Summary. 8 Nov. 2019, https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Ecological-Risk-Screening-Summary-Wakasagi.pdf.

“What is the “King Tacos” which is loved by Okinawan?” Okinawa Labo, https://okinawa-labo.com/en/okinawa-taco-rice-1966.

**Wondrich, David. Imbibe! From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, A Salute in Stories and Drinks to “Professor” Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. Updated and Revised Edition. New York City, TarcherPerigee, 2015.**

“〆まで美味しい ごま豆乳鍋つゆ ストレート” Mizkan, https://www.mizkan.co.jp/product/group/?gid=07101.

“簡単タコライス” Lettuce Club, https://www.lettuceclub.net/recipe/dish/22978/.

“王道タコライス” Delish Kitchen, https://delishkitchen.tv/recipes/196315721972580774. “簡単！すぐ出来！タコライス　レシピ・作り方” Kurashiru, https://www.kurashiru.com/recipes/80ca4e93-29d6-422a-8168-cf409ac46d23.

[melishade]

Hi again! I have a spoiler question for Attack on Prime! Maybe you've already answered this, or explained in your AO3 notes, but I wanted to ask this just in case.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

So what made you want Eren to still go through with the Rumbling in AoP? I'll admit, I was expecting Unicron to be the big bad. But having it be Eren was a pretty big twist for me, and I was impressed by how you went about that aspect of the original story.

So you are new to this channel, and you probably think that this story started in 2022. It did not. Attack on Prime's official start date was around April 2013, when the first season of the anime came out and the manga was still in the Clash of the Titans arc. I started working on this story over ten years ago on FF.net before going dark in 2019 and remerging in 2022.

And during this time, I decided to go ahead in the manga in order to continue writing the fanfic. I didn't want to remain stagnant for four years waiting for season 2 to drop. And as I continued writing ahead, I got to the major plot twist of humanity not being extinct, the outside world, yada yada. I was curious as to how AOT was going to end, and how I would end the story...

Until we got to chapter 105 after Sasha's death and Eren started laughing like a maniac that I realized that Eren was going to activate the Rumbling, and I was already making my plans of Optimus and the Survey Corps going against the Rumbling, the Autobots arriving in the nick of time, and then Optimus killing Eren. I had a sinking feeling that Isayama was going to have Eren activate the Rumbling, but I just didn't know when. I had the rough ideas for my ending back in 2019 because of chapter 105 in the manga. It was just the middle that was hard to figure out because I didn't know how AOT was going to end.

I've made a bunch of tweeks since then, from scraping the idea that Eren pulled a Lelouch due to the poor delivery Isayama did. It later evolved into providing a more detailed response on why Eren descended into madness. I was also originally keeping the Rumbling to Paradis and not have it hit the mainland to having it wipe out 50% of the population. Primus being able to come into play didn't occur until the Paths got involved (genuinely happy about that one). I also changed Megatron being aware of Eren's plans because Eren told him and trying to stop it because that just would have fucked with Megatron's whole character arc. There were a lot of edits and revisions from the rough draft. Magath was originally supposed to survive and I never thought that I would have Lara play such an integral role in the story.

Also, on top of all of that, I've been so sick and tired of Unicron in TFP. Like I was genuinely annoyed when they brought him back in the Predacons Rising movie in the most convoluted way possible instead of just making Predaking the antagonist of the movie. And since Unicron's physical form is stuck on Earth and his spiritual form is stuck in a lava lamp, I'm not making another asspull when it comes to him. The deity stays where he is. And it's been shown in TFP that dark energon can still bring back the dead without Unicron being directly involved.

I also did explain some of this in the author's notes of AOP at one point, but I don't mind explaining it again

[absolutebl]

Hello, hello, Sensei! I figured other BL fans might benefit from this Q&A, so I'm posing this question on the public channels: in your reblog of my TharnType review, you mentioned watching Dew the Movie in a comment about being surprised about the developing kinds of BL that were coming out of Thailand in 2019. Could you expound a little more on that? I'm trying to get a sense of what Dew stands for by way of where it lives in the BL history books. I'm also aware that if it weren't for Bad Buddy, that this piece would have likely been Ohm Pawat's last appearance in queer media, and I want to keep that in mind before I watch it (which will be very soon). Dew will be the only movie on my Old GMMTV Challenge list, so I want to give it the understanding it deserves. THANK YOU, *FOR EVERYTHING*, SENSEI! <3

Dew the Movie

Not a review, more where it sits in Thailand's cinematic journey and how that correlates to queer cinema and its standard pattern of evolution.

I've always though of Dew as GMMTV's My Bromance. Not the same tropes but same tenor. Sweet Student Boy is another one. Or even Your Name Engraved Herein (although that is Taiwan and superior).

All quite heavy. Not much BL.

In Thailand this style started with Love of Siam. And I would put Present Perfect in there as impactful as well (very arthouse and complicated piece that made waves in the Thai queer film industry for many reasons not the least of which was political).

Most queer cinema enters the world with this kind of offering.

There is also a gay rep vis "character patterns in cinematic traditions" that everyone pretty much knows about in ET:

if there at all = kill the gay

if there at all = punch down humor (aka fear the gay so mock openly)

gay rep narratives green lit (usually arthouse) but in order to be taken seriously by critics and greater social structure are censored away from joy (gayness not permitted to be portrayed in a positive light) = queer characters exist but are not allowed to end up happy - these shows can win awards and critical acclaim (the Broke Back Mountain effect)

magical gay advice giver (queer serves only as a plot device to help the hets) - there's usually a make-over involved

1 major gay character (usually in comedy/romance) = tokenize the queer side (aka my gay bestie)

happy ending sanitized gay romances (or skinned romances where the gay characters act like hets - see seme/uke),

actual gay romances honest to the community/experience and peopled with multiple queer characters and life stages

Of course this is not a tidy progression, we can see Thai BL (stage 6) still grappling with 1-5, but also slowly moving into and having more and more of stage 7.

Actual queer narratives (of which romance would be a subset and tends to emerge later) like Dew stay quite dark, gritty, and chewy and usually spring up along side the mainstream depiction of gay characters - around the time that mainstream film decides to acknowledge gays exist at all (and immediately starts killing them).

They just get little to no attention because they are under funded, under marketed, and scary for mainstream viewers. Society isn't ready if these are made too soon in the 1-7 progression. Which is not to say the shouldn't be made! Just why they aren't popular in the zeitgeist.

Dew is part of the "yes but what about the real gays?" side (yet parallel) evolving tradition to BL (that is only now kind of getting integrated into BL). So, stage 3.

But also all stuff I watched North American arthouse grapple with extensively in the 90s and seemed to all follow EXACTLY the same non-romantic narrative path. Therefore it feels like I've seen it a million times.

I'm personally exhausted by this kind of "picking at gay pain" queer content. I don't need to see it anymore. I got into BL because it was materially different and all ways from what happened over here in Hollywood. We never got THIS level of stage 6 and it's fascinating that Asia is lingering in it for so long.

Back to Dew...

Wistful gay?

What might have been...

Something like that?

These shows grapple with identity and expression and out-ness and courage.

It's sad and depressing.

That's about all I remember of it because it was so much like so much of what I had already seen in queer cinema. Perhaps special for the Thai queer film world, but not special for me.

Although I do remember thinking Ohm was great in it.

In the end I think Dew was GMMTV picking up and experimenting with the more universal tradition of exploring (and exploiting for drama) gay pain. It's not really a romance in the modern sense of the term... and I prefer romance.

(source)

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-12-16

Entering the Holiday Vortex any day now

Listening: The soundtrack to Cats: The Musical because I have never stopped being a musicals nerd. Prompted me multiple times to check if they got rid of a fun part from a song in the 2019 movie and they always did! Got rid of Deuteronomy's 99 wives, entirely dropped The Moments of Happiness, and in order to resolve that, here's The Moments of Happiness.

One of those bizzare meandering songs.

Watching: Watched Get Out because I figure I should get the Peeleverse going.

It's good! It does a great job of making you deny the very obvious fact that the girlfriend is extremely in on it the whole time until you can't anymore and it's like, yes, of course, she is not somehow being manipulated or brainwashed she's just as into this as the rest of them, it's very smooth.

Love how every single person talks like an evil vizier.

Reading: Started The Parable of the Sower. Look there's not much to say that hasn't already been said, Butler is a good author, I only just started but it's interesting to read this like, half imagined half lived reference to what it feels like to be surrounded by abject poverty. It's bad! It's not a fun experience, and I think this is a really good coverage of how it feels to be in this environment and how it affects the way you think about people.

It stands out to me that one of the big themes being set up here is the protective and isolating force of walls, which. If you are ever in South Africa you will notice immediately the shockingly large number of walls. Every single house has walls, and the richer an area is the higher the walls are, in Soweto every little house has a meter and a half high brick wall, my suburbs had two meter walls, Sandton has three meter walls, topped over with electric fences. This is probably not an experience you have had. Going to other places and finding that they just. don't have walls. It's very strange.

Still getting going! Going to be interesting!

Playing: More! Cyberpunk. The city design is crazy, it's so heavily layered in many places. They do funnel you into a few more heavily designed zones so you don't notice the emptier areas as much but the designed areas are SO huge. Layer upon layer of detail and flash and colour. It makes Skyrim and GTA V look like sandpits.

Hit level 20 netrunning the other day and it's extremely fun to hit people with the ten thousand beam attack the second they pop their head up. You really have to lean on your abilities and cyberware if you want to survive which is nice, very much aligned with the game. I am pleased to notice that the DLC includes a copy of the CP2020 rules which I have been rereading. Friday Night Firefight is such a good read.

Making: 3D printed skull! RobotOS stuff! Lots of middleware stuff that doesn't lead to much.

Tools and Equipment: I keep saying I'm gonna talk about Distrobox. Let's talk about Distrobox.

Distrobox is a container management tool that goes basically the opposite way to every other container system, and aims to tightly integrate the containers it runs with your desktop system. Containers run in distrobox inherit your home directory, access to most peripherals and hardware, tie in to your display manager, and as much as possible try to act like they're meant to be part of your base system.

It can use podman, docker, or the bizzare ultra-lightweight userspace-only container manager lillipod to host containers, which means that in that last case you can run it on any system even if you don't have root, I've done this on my work dev server at $oldjob before we got Podman on there.

This means that, for instance, you can directly access your files from the container without having to mess with complex shared mounts or copying files back and forth, and it allows GUI applications launched within a distrobox to just appear on your desktop as though they were native.

This allows you to mix and match packages and features from a variety of different systems very easily, and is particularly handy for developing for multiple distributions or using tools that only really ship for one distro. At work I had to run mksusecd to build some install images and rather than deal with trying to set up mksusecd on Ubuntu, I just dropped into a SUSE Tumbleweed distrobox and got to work. Worked great!

I've also used it to sandbox messy development environments and I'm currently using it to host a robotOS learning playground on my desktop without having to look after an run a whole VM or anything. It means that the install of neovim and zsh and whatever in the Ubuntu container directly inherit my standard config files and even have access to the same plugin ecosystem as on my base system!

You can heavily customise your distroboxes, allocating them separate homedirs if necessary, exporting apps from inside a distrobox to the host system so you can seamlessly run them as though they're installed on the host, and more weird designs. Really handy tool!

Here's some reading if you're interested

Containers are really cool.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Son of Ingagi

Week 21:

Film(s): Son of Ingagi (Dir. Richard C. Kahn, 1940, USA)

Viewing Format: Amazon Streaming

Date Watched: 2024-06-19

Rationale for Inclusion:

Last week I concluded my post on Dr. Cyclops (Dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940, USA) by noting that I wish I had done more thorough research, or given consideration to additional themes and subgenres, whilst building out the titles for this survey from the silent era through 1940s. While I am not interested in doing posts on films made before 1940 at this point, I did realize a film that I had recently learned about could be inserted into this blog series, despite the fact that in terms of viewings for this survey, my partner and I are well into the 1960s.

What is this exceptional film? One that I originally dismissed because its title made it sound like another derivative horror sequel, Son of Ingagi (Dir. Richard C. Kahn, 1940, USA). I came to discover that it was a film worth including in this survey thanks to watching the documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (Dir. Xavier Burgin, 2019, USA), which in an early segment explains that Son of Ingagi was the first sci-fi horror film with an all black cast, with a script by Spencer Williams, based on his short story "House of Horror." Given the lack of black people in early American genre cinema it seemed a noteworthy film to include.

Reactions:

My partner and I both went to film school, and spent many hours in our late-teens and early twenties shooting no budget movies with friends and classmates. We consequently have a lot of patience for low budget filmmaking, and had to employ it whilst watching Son of Ingagi. The shots were often staged for ease of long takes, close-ups lacked proper focus or good framing, and some of the performances were rather stiff. Additionally, the copy available on Amazon that we viewed was a standard definition transfer or a mediocre print, which was also unfortunate, but not an uncommon mode of access for independent movies of the 20th century.

The most egregious technical aspect of Son of Ingagi for us though was it was clearly missing a reel. The transition between newlyweds Bob (Alfred Grant) and Eleanor Lindsay (Daisy Bufford) being accused of murdering Dr. Helen Jackson (Laura Bowman) to inheriting her house is jarring. One moment the audience is seeing a flurry of expository newspaper headlines, the next Eleanor is preparing a meal in the kitchen of Dr. Jackson' manor house and chides Bob for having eaten the roast duck she had intended to use for supper. I had to rewatch the transition to verify that one of those headlines does in fact indicate "Lindsay Cleared of Jackson Murder," but it flashes by so quickly at the end of the montage that the audience can scarcely read it.

The newspaper montage is followed by another moment of questionable print integrity. Eleanor chides Bob for eating the roast duck "bones and all", her voice carrying over a blank, gray slug of frames, then Eleanor is suddenly in the manor's office talking to Bradshaw (Earl J. Morris), the executor of Dr. Jackson's will. Luckily, Eleanor explains in that scene that Bob is out at the shop replacing the missing food, which fills in the narrative gap.

The American Film Institute catalog entry lists the film's runtime as 70 minutes, but the transfer available for rent on Amazon.com and viewing on Archive.org only clocks in at 62 minutes. That means that 8 minutes, or slightly under a single reel of 35mm film, is definitely missing from the version that's readily in circulation. In theory, that time would smooth and clarify the jarring, unclear transitions in the version we saw.

Does a complete print of this film still exist? Were those 8 minutes lost to deterioration, damage, or censorship? I wish I knew. I wish I had the time and funding to find out. I hope some archivist is already assembling a grant to do a better, more complete preservation transfer of Son of Ingagi given its importance to American film history.

Despite its technical flaws, Son of Ingagi is a noteworthy film for its era. Race films, or films with all black casts targeted at a black audience, had existed since the silent era and encompassed independent films by black creatives about middle-class, educated black people to films by mainstream Hollywood studios with white creatives and depictions of lower income, Southern accented black stereotypes. Son of Ingagi falls in the center of this spectrum: it's an independent film with a white director, but black screenwriter, and its characters are mostly middle-class types, not caricatures grown out of minstrel shows and D.W. Griffith's questionable sources.

If you are used to seeing early sound films where only token black characters turn up as domestic servants, "exotic" entertainment, menial labor, or comic relief, seeing the opening scenes of Son of Ingagi are a breath of fresh air. The wedding of Bob and Eleanor has a home movie quality in its mundane naturalness. As much contempt as some members of the community have for Dr. Jackson's miserly nature, she's always addressed by her title. (White female doctors aren't always given that respect in mainstream Hollywood productions to this day!) Dr. Jackson's shiftless brother who attempts to steal her fortune, Zeno (Arthur Ray), and the bumbling Detective Nelson (screenwriter Spencer Williams) fit within archetypal roles played by white characters in mainstream Hollywood films. Any negative racial baggage associated with black men playing those types in a mainstream (i.e. dominantly white cast) film is rendered neutral by the all black casting.

And then there's the missing link ape-man that Dr. Jackson apparently brought back from her trip to Africa, along with a fortune in gold, that lives in her secret basement: N'Gina. For viewers today his presence and the lack of exposition around him stands out as surreal in a film that opens as a realistic drama. Granted, as soon as Dr. Jackson's secret basement laboratory, complete with chemistry set, is revealed, it is clear that the film has entered the realm of sci-fi horror in the tradition of Frankenstein or The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Yet, despite modern write-ups referring to Dr. Jackson as a "mad scientist," she does not fit the pre-established archetype. Yes, she is doing secretive experiments, without peer review, that will supposedly benefit mankind, but she does not act as test subject herself, nor kidnaps unconsenting test subjects, nor traffic in reanimated bodies. N'Gina is not her creation nor prisoner test subject, but more of an acquired, rare pet. Dr. Jackson is not without empathy for others either, as is evident by her choice to help her community via mostly anonymous donations, and the kindness she shows N'Gina when he accidentally cuts himself. Mad scientists tend to be self-centered and insular, with some exceptions. It is more accurate to describe her as an eccentric woman of science than a mad scientist.

In fact, the amazing, but undefined, breakthrough that Dr. Jackson achieves shortly before her death is largely irrelevant beyond being a catalyst in N'Gina going into a homicidal rage. The balance of the film is more concerned with the question of what happened to Dr. Jackson's African gold hoard and N'Gina defending the manor against any outsiders. Frankly, I question if Son of Ingagi should qualify as science fiction at all, since it is closer to a work like the original, short story mystery The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe than the mad scientist infused 1932 film adaptation with Bela Lugosi, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Dir. Robert Florey, USA).

Granted, in the selection of titles for this survey I deliberately left off King Kong (Dir. Marion C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933, USA) and have been quite particular about films that include dinosaurs or other monstrous creatures. Zoology may be a legitimate field of science but gigantic apes and miraculously surviving dinosaurs in narratives without clear technology tie-ins, or atomic intervention, are more like cryptids in my estimation, thus fantasy.

Yet, this line of thinking fails to take into account the iceberg of meaning gerding the film's title: Son of Ingagi. Why is the film titled that when "Ingagi" is neither someone's name nor N'Gina's classification as a creature? The short answer is scientific racism. 

An unfortunate consequence of Darwin's Theory of Evolution was white supremacists exploiting it to claim that not only were black people of African decent not the same species as white people of European decent, but that they were evolutionarily closer to apes and monkeys than white people; with other races ranking somewhere in between, but still inferior to whites. None of these assertions were backed by evidence gathered via true scientific method, but they nevertheless shaped (and sadly continue to shape) attitudes about human genetic variation. (For more information on this topic, I recommend Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini.) 

With such theories in circulation, Edgar Rice Burroughs having Tarzan's claim that he was the product of a union between a human man and female ape in the original Tarzan of the Apes (1912) going unquestioned by the shipwrecked party he encounters makes sense. And the belief that apes and humans could procreate together, or at least successfully engage in sexual intercourse, found its way into other popular media narratives, including a 1930 film called Ingagi (Dir. William S. Campbell, 1930, USA).

Ingagi was an exploitation film that falsely claimed to be a documentary during its original release. In addition to relying on unlicensed, existent footage of Africa and footage shot around Los Angeles' Griffith Park Zoo, the filmmakers staged scenes of gorillas (actually men in suits) claiming scantily clad, black African women as sex slaves, supposedly in accordance to a local ritual in the Belgian Congo.

The film was outed as being fake during its theatrical run, but Ingagi was successful enough that it influenced the creation of King Kong and insertion of the mad scientist trying to find a human mate for his pet gorilla plot into the film version of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. White women being molested by apes in these films has been read by critics as having bestiality presented in the place of miscegenation, thus black men erotically menacing white women, in accordance with a favorite stereotype of white supremacists.

With that cultural milieu for context, the decision to title the film adaptation of Spencer Williams' "House of Horror" "Son of Ingagi" was a deliberate choice to capitalize on and engage with the racialized fad of killer ape movies. That being the case, the audience was meant to infer that N'Gina was not simply a missing link ape-man, but the product of a human-ape coupling thus the son of the women fetishizing gorillas from Ingagi, which incidentally is apparently the Ikinyarwanda word for "gorilla." 

Son of Ingagi consciously operating with the subtext of scientific racism does add more legitimacy to its classification as science fiction. I still would be more apt to file it under "mystery" or "horror," while the AFI catalog takes the broad view that Son of Ingagi is a "comedy-drama," but regardless of metadata choice it is a fascinating cultural artifact. I am glad that I spent the time to view and unpack it, and do genuinely hope a more complete restoration turns up in the near future.

[assignedpeanutallergyatbirth]

I have thoughts about IT Chapter 2 (2019).

I had watched the IT miniseries and then about a year later I watched IT Chapters 1 & 2. I loved Chapter 1 (and still do). I really enjoyed Chapter 2 when I first watched it, and there are still parts that I really like. I have since watched both movies and the miniseries several times, and read the book. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like Chapter 2 as an interpretation of the story.

As a one-to-one adaptation of the book, the miniseries is better than the movies. That’s an indisputable fact, and also not necessarily what the movies were trying to do. The change in setting (1950’s to 1980’s) does change the way that the characters are presented. I actually really like this, and will almost certainly make a separate post about it someday. The way that Bill Denbrough is presented in the movies, however, is just inconsistent with his character. In the book, he is the leader of the Losers. They all look up to him and respect him. They all genuinely love him and he genuinely loves them back. Every single Loser almost worships Bill, to the point that the book even comments that he’s the only person Ben wouldn’t be jealous of if Beverly dated. And Bill is aware of his friends, even if he is still asking them to do dangerous things. Still his characterization in Chapter 1, while off, doesn't ruin things nearly as much as the mess that Chapter 2 becomes.

So IT is a beast of a book to read. It’s long and the dual story structure is written concurrently, meaning that it jumps from kids to adults randomly. The miniseries keeps this to an extent. I think separating the two stories is smart, but having the two run concurrently does allow the reader to see that though the structure seems circular the characters have grown. They are adults the second time they face Pennywise, and have different priorities and fears. And they have to figure out how to defeat Pennywise as these new versions of themselves. And, yes, Chapter 2 does this, for everyone except Bill. Because in the book, Bill actually cares about his wife, Audra, who follows him to Derry and gets abducted by It. In the book, Bill is a rational adult who chooses to go into the sewers, leading and with the support of his friends. He grows throughout the book, coming to realizations about what parts of him need to revert back to his childhood self versus which parts of his adult self are needed to win (the cheating bit). Which is really what each of the Losers has to do in Derry before they can defeat It.

So I am so annoyed by the choices made for Bill Denbrough in IT Chapter 2. The inclusion of a random stand-in Georgie child completely erases any capacity that Bill has for growth in the story. It keeps him in the mentality of his traumatized 13 year old self, and he acts like it. He is supposed to be the beloved leader. The Losers are supposed to rally around him, because he is everyone’s big brother/first crush. Why is he going rogue in the sewers? Why did they take the responsible leader and make him a manic loner? Why did they do Bill Denbrough so dirty? It completely ruins the integrity of the movie as an adaptation of IT.

[eldritch-elrics]

i finally watched the backrooms webseries by kane pixels!

because "weird architecture"-based horror is one of my absolute favorite vibes, i knew i had to check it out eventually. and i'm glad i did! overall it's astonishingly well-done, especially from a technical/effects perspective. very good visual design, audio design, etc.

under the cut i'll add some more detailed thoughts + criticisms!

things i liked:

pretty much all the found-footage episodes are extremely well done. there's real tension! it's super spooky! my favorites are the ones entitled "pitfalls" and "found footage #2." i really enjoy how the creator is able to innovate on the concept of the backrooms, keeping things visually cohesive while branching out into various styles of architecture. i don't think i can do them justice other than to say that the vibes are perfect.

i also found myself more invested in the main "plot" of the series than i thought i would be. i like the interactions between the scientists/explorers; they're both fun and also realistic-feeling. while the introduction of async (the shady corporation trying to expand into the backrooms) initially made me go "what a cliche!" - i think their goal of ~solving the housing crisis~ by building shitty homes in a dangerous alternate dimension is pretty unique and interesting. i love the parts where it's clear they're rushing the job of making the backrooms "habitable" because they want to impress investors. it's not what i expected from the series, but i'd love to see more of that. always gotta respect a horror series with concrete themes.

also, this is very specific, but i like how the explorers have lots of lingo and safety procedures. that's an important part of making something like this actually feel naturalistic. i am convinced that this is a real, government-funded investigation!

neutral observations:

while i don't think it's fair to call the backrooms webseries cliche/unoriginal, it's clearly building heavily off of preexisting media. kane pixels's youtube channel makes it clear he's a portal fan - that's absolutely an inspiration here. there are also heavy vibes of control (2019 game) and annihilation (2018 movie). since all of these are things i like, i'm happy! and i think the webseries is doing a unique spin on "shady government project sends scientists/explorers/etc into surreal alien phenomenon." but at the same time, i find myself questioning why it always has to be a shady government/corporate project. for sure, it lets you investigate themes like "the limit of science" and "how much control do these organizations have over us and do they really care about our safety" and fun things like that, but i would have been equally happy if it wasn't doing that trope again.

i also have no strong opinions on the idea of introducing monsters into the backrooms. some people have strong opinions on this. i think the monsters add to the tension in fun ways. i like how inhumanly they move! and i like how it's implied (ish? at least this is my theory) that the monsters are mutated forms of people who've gotten lost in the backrooms. and how they have this kind of fungusy vibe...

for the most part, though, the series is scariest when there aren't any monsters around. but the threat of monsters keeps tension high, and i like how they're integrated into the plot so far. it's less about monsters being present and more what you do with them, i think?

criticisms:

my biggest criticism might seem like kind of an unfair one, but it's central to how i view found footage as a medium/genre. fundamentally, to me, found footage is about medium-as-plot-device - the camera is a character, the editing is done by people in-universe, and there should be a strong feeling that the work is presented the way it is for a diegetic reason (even if we don't know what that reason is).

the backrooms webseries consistently fails to convince me that it is entirely shot and edited in-universe. one might say "but it isn't trying to be convincing in this way," but i don't think that's true - the way the episodes are labeled with dates, and the way everything is cut together, makes it seem like it's presenting curated videos from the fictional 90s. it's possible other people are more lenient about "what a found footage series should be," or if they classify backrooms as "found footage" at all! but the way i read it, its particular priorities as a found footage series seriously clash with my own definition of what a found footage series should be concerned with.

i find it particularly jarring when it's playing spooky music over cut-together photos and video. even if async is supposed to be sinister, why would they make videos that so obviously paint them that way? is somebody else supposed to have created some of these videos? if so, i would have liked an indication of who and maybe why, even if it isn't really explained! the final episode (for now) does this pretty well - presents itself as an internal communication to be shown to other async employees. the episode "motion detected" is also really good: it's clear what purpose the video has in-universe. but others, especially towards the beginning of the series, feel jarring because their creation isn't so grounded in the universe.

there are also segments where the filmmaking language shifts from found footage to cinema. see, i think i understand why these segments are here, but i simply do not think it works at all. when you create found footage, you, by nature of the medium, make your viewer extremely aware of the camera as an object. when the series shifts into a cinematographic mode - filming and cutting between actors like in a movie - it feels incredibly fake. (see the episode "report" for an example of this.) who is filming these people? why? why cut stuff together in this way? i get the sense that it's supposed to be an "objective" view of stuff going on outside the backrooms, stuff that no in-universe cameras are supposed to see, but if that's the case, the series's chosen medium has already undermined any sense of objectivity here, since previous episodes have taught us to question the camera. i do hope any continuation to the story addresses this! i would love to know why async is filming themselves like this! and it's always possible that the cinematic language is supposed to make the viewer feel uneasy. but idk. i'm not a fan

overall, the backrooms is truly excellent found footage horror. when it stops being found footage, though, the found-footage-ness of the rest of it can't help but make me stop suspending my disbelief!

[no-one-picked-maris]

Why I Think They Won't Re-Release Felicity (in any meaningful capacity)

Felicity's stories are very white and protestant in a very alienating way - and I say this as someone who related to her as a child. She's literally a member of the gentry, she's Samantha of the 18th century.

Fun Fact: In the earliest editions of Meet Felicity, rather than referring to Jiggy Nye's language as "not proper", it's referred to as "sinful". Felicity is also chided with reminding her that disobeying one's parent's is a sin. Oh, and this change:

Nan: "Then Mr. Nye called the horse a nag, and he said the devil could have it. And he said he would skin us alive if we ever came back!”

Nan: "Then Mr. Nye called the horse a nag, and he said anyone could take it if they could ride it. And he said he would skin us alive if we ever came back!”

Her hornbook:

(and the parentification)

Felicity and Kirsten share a very similar problem in the way they present history, they are literally the mascots for sanitized white people history. There are no black people in Kirsten's stories. Kirsten is literally Manifest Destiny: the Doll.

There's only one free man in Felicity's stories, Issac. Rose and Marcus are slaves. King's Creek is a plantation, a plantation left to Mother and the children when Grandfather dies (he knew they "loved it so.") Felicity is a slaveowner.

She's not reading Thomas Paine there guys.

I haven't read Felicity's Beforever series. I know they're abridged, and I know they didn't substantially change them. Felicity's relationship with her Grandfather, and his subsequent death, are integral to the series.

How do her central series present her slaveownership? It was ignored as some sort of background consequence of her possession of King's Creek. Like it's just a fact of life, with no need to remark upon it.

okay, and:

Felicity was the worst selling light skinned doll in the collection. Even worse than Kirsten whose sales got cannibalized by Kit after 2000.

I'm not sure if there's a consensus on why Felicity sold so poorly. Red hair, a dainty collection, not girly enough? Her class contemporary, Samantha, is widely agreed to be one of the most popular historical dolls AG released. So it's not class consciousness.

Both don't follow the rules of the time (being a tomboy, befriending people outside her class status):

Felicity only got a movie because Julia Roberts loved her.

Kirsten: Little House on the Prairie and All American History. This is the time of the Oregon Trail Game, after all. I lived on pioneer stories when I was little (1990s).

Samantha: Romanticized "victorian" era things were popular, and her clothing is pretty 1980s inspired. Look at it.

Molly: The Grandmothers' generation.

Is it Felicity's mob caps? She was the horse girl, and that wasn't enough. Was she frumpy, with her gowns rather than dresses? Her schooling - it's unrelatable. She's learning etiquette with Miss Manderly rather than struggling with Miss Campbell's times tables:

Her daddy owning a fucking general store and being prominent enough to provoke a reaction with his refusal to sell tea?

Her Beforever release was out for 2 years, releasing during the 2017 Doll Deluge or whatever we call it. She was gone by 2019. She got a doll, accessories, and undergarments. At least the latter were more period accurate.

you have to keep your trademark active.

Kirsten's unpopularity prior to archival is easily explained by the release of Kit, the decreasing popularity of pioneer stories, and the changing times.

Felicity was never popular at the outset.

Why?

Felicity's 35th Anniversary Edition was the first to sell out, but that can mean a lot of things. AG doesn't realize sales figures and stock figures. Selling out of 2,500 Felicity is relative to selling out of, say, 10,000 Samantha. Businesses order stock based on projected sales. I'd argue, without the benefit of the full statistical picture, that Felicity collectors are a small and passionate group.

They removed Felicity from catalogs in 2001, making her an online exclusive. Did sixty somethings use the internet at the turn of the century? Mine didn't! She wasn't worth the catalog space a year after American Girl was sold to Mattel. Pleasant was inspired by colonial Williamsburg to create AG. She wasn't enough to gamble a new doll line on. She had to wait until they had some footing. I'd argue Pleasant always knew Felicity would be a poor seller.

When Felicity was removed, I got Kit. She was my next favorite after Felicity and I related to her as a small child, too.

Which reminds me, Kit is responsible for a lot in the AG Historical Collection:

She was another blonde haired blue eyed doll, but with a more relatable collection, and easier to deal with hair:

Ta dah ^

I think Kit also a soft relaunch of Felicity:

In photos and brief:

wearing boys' clothing

close with their fathers

tomboys: with felicity being interested in footraces and racehorses, and kit being a newshound, lacking patience for Ruthie's princess stories (at first).

Kit was like a two-for-one special. I'd really like to see her sales stats compared to Felicity and Kirsten.

[thebroccolination]

So, I have a theory about GawinKrist and Gawin's vampire show with Joss that seemed to come out of nowhere.

THE GOLDEN BLOOD THEORY

Gawin's been around since 2018, but he didn't get a main role in a BL until Be My Favorite. Back in (presumably) 2017, he worked as an usher at a movie theater after graduating from high school in the States in 2016. His two biggest roles before BMF were arguably Mork in the Kiss series (2018-2019), and Dan in Not Me (2021).

He was also the best part of Enchanté (2022), but tragically not one of the main cast.

After Gawin stuck with GMMTV through the worst of the pandemic regulations that restricted filming and then thoroughly proved his range in Not Me, I have a feeling that GMMTV was finally planning to give him his first leading role in a BL series: a vampire series opposite Joss planned for 2023.

Then, unexpectedly, Mike left his leading role in Be My Favorite in maybe August or September, and this is presumably when GMMTV looked at their options for Krist's costar and decided Gawin was their best bet.

Here's my thinking: if Golden Blood was planned for 2023, then GMMTV would have announced it at their showcase for 2023 programming in November of 2022. But the Be My Favorite recasting of Mike for Gawin was announced in September of 2022, so GMMTV could have easily pulled Golden Blood from the lineup and pushed it back a year. Since Gawin has never had a partner and Joss has never been in BL before this, no one was expecting a series from them, so no one would have known to expect anything from Gawin at all. Based on conversations I've had with Gawin's fans, he'd been so inactive that they didn't think he'd have a series at all in 2023.

Meanwhile, GMMTV had already announced Be My Favorite at their 2021 showcase of 2022 programming, and the director Waa had requested more time to work on the script in 2022, so the air date was pushed to 2023. As of September of 2022, Be My Favorite was announced, anticipated, already pushed back a year, and most likely paid for, so it was probably considered a high-priority series. Not to mention it had one of the Holy Trinity and the director of The Gifted attached, and it was to be the first BL series produced by Parbdee Studios.

My mantra with GMMTV for the past several months has been this:

They're incompetent, not malicious.

The fact that Gawin Caskey, better known to most for singing rather than acting, had never performed onstage before this summer at MUSICON in Japan and had to go to Krist before the second show because he had no idea what to talk about between songs is bonkers to me. Like, I'm not at all a GMMTV anti. I praise them when they deserve it, but holy shit. You've had a talent like Gawin Caskey for five years and you only just put him onstage this year?

I think SOTUS being the shock hit that saved them from bankruptcy is a good summary of how GMMTV seems to operate, at least from what I've seen: they throw stuff at a wall and sometimes it works really well! They like money a lot, so if money happens immediately, they do more of that even if they have no idea how it happened or why it was appealing.

Speaking of which—

GAWINKRIST & BE MY FAVORITE PROMOTION

Over the course of filming and promotion, Krist and Gawin became very close. They've both called each other their safe zone, Gawin moved his TV into Krist's house to be a second gaming screen for a while because he was over there constantly, and Krist got Gawin three (3) separate, custom birthday cakes in August (one at a small surprise party, one at the BMF final episode screening, and one at Gawin's birthday event). Krist even integrated Gawin into his university friend group, which is so absolutely fucking wild I can't even. Krist is twenty-eight years old and he adores Gawin so much he wanted Gawin to be part of a friend group he's had for ten years.

Gawin adores Krist's favorite child, they went to an art gallery, and once they even tried to bring a guitar to a beach at night to play music to the stars or some shit (the beach was closed they're both ridiculous). So when Krist calls Gawin "my precious buddy" he doesn't do it as some fanservice thing. They are basically family at this point, regardless of what happens in their professional lives, and it was a beautiful dynamic to watch over the summer.

Part of what made their chemistry so natural in Be My Favorite probably had a lot to do with how much they opened up to each other. Back in May, Krist shared that because he and Gawin aren't especially fond of social media, they discussed how to do the necessary promotion for their series comfortably. Krist actually got Gawin Caskey on TikTok to do TikTok dances, so once again: very good friends.

They also shared videos of them just hanging out at Krist's house eating snacks and playing video games, or playing guitar and riffing, playing with harmonies so beautiful I mourn daily that they don't have an album together.

When the series started airing, Krist invited Gawin to his house to watch the episodes together and go over their acting choices. But GMMTV had also scheduled Krist for a slew of solo concerts throughout Asia, so he had to watch some of them alone on the road overseas. What would have been a fun weekly promotion opportunity was complicated by GMMTV's bizarrely timed scheduling. (Of course, Krist rarely has a day off in general, but you'd think they'd organize his schedule to prioritize his first BL series since 2017.)

Be My Favorite didn't get much promotion overall compared to other GMMTV series, and GawinKrist especially seemed to be treated sort of as an afterthought. They had a few podcast interviews, they went to see Elementals at the cinema (which ended up inspiring Krist's theme for his solo "Elements" concerts in Bangkok), they went to Japan together for MUSICON, Aye had them sing on her channel, and they had a live session for RISER. Those were all the major ones, I think. Not nothing, but there were a ton of missed opportunities for more.

And for a company whose CEO recently touted their actors as influencers and obsesses over Twitter hashtag trends and viewing numbers, the lack of opportunities they gave GK is a little unusual to me.

Unless GMMTV knew they had a vampire series starring Gawin and another actor that they'd postponed. And it'd be announced at their showcase for 2024 programming in October shortly after Be My Favorite ended in August.

It might also explain why, when pretty much every other series had a song performed at the showcase medley, Be My Favorite wasn't included. Even though Krist and Gawin are both known singers who had four songs in Be My Favorite between them.

In the immediate aftermath of the showcase, a lot of GawinKrist fans were unhappy with the news of Gawin's new series, myself included. I'm not a big vampire fan in general, and I'm not impressed with the teaser, the director, or the screenwriter, so I probably won't be watching it. (BounPrem's vampire series is starring BounPrem, so that's why that one's my exception.) I am, however, very happy for Gawin for getting more main character money and remaining in a lead role. He's an absolute sweetheart, and I hope he has more music in 2024 that I can support.

As days passed after the showcase, the more I thought about Golden Blood and where it came from. GMMTV is incompetent, sure, and GawinKrist didn't make the same waves as other pairs, but they definitely have a committed fanbase, and Be My Favorite got overwhelmingly positive reviews, particularly for GawinKrist's chemistry. They trended consistently whenever they did anything, and most intriguingly, Japanese fans really love them thanks to MUSICON and FanFest. Japanese magazines are still releasing interviews and photoshoots with GawinKrist to this day (with plans for more!).

The only thing that makes sense to me is that Golden Blood was meant to happen first, and GMMTV didn't want to waste resources pushing GawinKrist over the summer when they knew Gawin would have to start from scratch with Joss in October.

It's kind of wild to think about, but if Mike hadn't left Be My Favorite, it would have gone ahead as planned, and Golden Blood would have aired this year at some point. And that would mean there's a timeline out there where Gawin and Krist were never cast together, and this beautiful friendship they created never happened. They never got to experience that safe zone they found in each other, and they never would have known what they were missing.

I'm still sad that their professional time together was so short, but this theory makes me feel better about it because rather than being something we were robbed of, they were a gift we never expected.

And just like KristSingto before them, GawinKrist are still close, still friends, and can enjoy their time together without the added pressure of selling and promoting their closeness. They can be friends without scrutiny. They can count their series as a point of pride. This unexpected masterpiece that brought them together.

And maybe someday, when their schedules line up again, they can make the beautiful fucking album that I deserve. [fire emoji]

[fedor-bortnik-digital-media-blog]

3. SOURCES - Intertextuality and Transmedia

Intertextuality and transmedia are powerful tools, that allow the consumers to enjoy the same franchise as different mediums. We can not only enjoy the comics about the superman, but also watch the movies about the character, play games as a superhero and so on. This allows us to explore our favourite franchise even further, speculate more with friends about the lore, and generally have more excitement with the franchise. That is what makes transmedia a very interesting and exciting concept.

Henry Jenkins describes transmedia as… “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.” (2011) One of the biggest challenges of converting the medium (for example, adapting the movie into a video game), is understanding what made it great in the first medium, and then attempt to make it great in the second one. During the adaptation of the medium, artists must understand that, for example, applying the same rules from movie art to a game art will completely cross out the video game as a medium. 

Andrzej Sapkowski’s (1990) Witcher, as a franchise, is a great example of transmedia - Coming initially from books, then into games, into comics - and then finally into a series. The great fact about Witcher as a transmedia is that no matter which type of medium you choose, you will always get a story-oriented content: No matter if you read, play, or watch a movie - you will always have an opportunity to experience the world that the title is settled in, it’s characters, their level of actions and finally - the setting. Developers of each medium took the Witcher (1990) story as an independent source, ignoring the aspects of the original medium and focusing on the details of a new one. Each medium excitedly experiments with the original Witcher text and its own medium to expand on the existing world from a new perspective, such as an interactive world (video games), deep characters (books), and strong immersion (series). If the consumer did not enjoy one medium from the franchise - they can always try a different one and see if they will like it or not.

When the Witcher TV series (2019) was released, people did not enjoy the fact that the characters did not look familiar as from video games, but I don't think that they had to. Here, I agree with Henry Jenkins one quote where said that “Some have tried to argue that games are a key component of transmedia, but I do not want to prioritize digital media extensions over other kinds of media practices.” (2011), and I agree with this quote, since there are other components of transmedia like books, music, drawings that could also share the transmedia.

My final example of a media, that could support the quote above would be Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) - Coming from the game industry, and being released as a movie - it became extremely popular in the cinemas, claiming the viewer's hearts. What's great about this example is that the viewers do not have to play the game to love the movie. It became popular not because there was a game about the hedgehog or because of a large fan pool from the said game, but because of masterful use of the movie genre, good writing and so on.

Conclusion - Transmedia allows the creators to expand their ideas beyond one medium. With transmedia, people can not only read about their favourite fantasies but also listen to them, play them, and watch them. In other words - enjoy them in the best way they want to. With Transmedia there is only one big challenge -and it is to properly transfer or expand the selected media to a new medium, making sure it will be constructed reasonably and be enjoyed.

References:

Andrzej Sapkowski (1990), Witcher (9 vol.). Poland: SuperNowa.

Sonic The Hedgehog (2020), directed by Jeff Fowler. [Feature film]. Paramount Pictures

The Witcher (TV series), Netflix, December 20, 8:00.

Jenkins, H. (2011) “Transmedia 202: Further Reflection,” Henry Jenkins Pop Junction, 31 July. Available at: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html

[caixinliang]

Practice 1:

Assignment 2, Concept Art - Human and "Inhuman"

. Blog post 01

The film Annihilation was the starting point for this concept design exercise.

In the course of the class, Mr Leo mentioned the design of the human-turned-monster in the film "Annihilation" and the TV series "The Last of Us", which was very inspiring, so I decided to start from those inspirations for this concept.

I have analysed several legendary screen images presented below，and summarises a few interesting design points.

Example 1: Integration of diverse organisms

A talking grizzly bear in movie “Annihilation”, a pioneering new concept in sci-fi cinema.

In the film "Annihilation", the design of "a talking grizzly bear"(inhuman) is transformed from the "explorer who calls for help"(human).

The skulls of bears are melded with those of humans.

Example 2: Making the human organism grow like a plant

Screenshots from the TV series "The Last of us"

Compare the similar design in the film "Annihilation".

There is an incredibly powerful scene where the entire human body(human) is dissected, growing and spreading like a plant (inhuman) in the film Annihilation.

Example 3: The human figure and the Uncanny valley.

Mr Leo mentioned the concept of "the Uncanny valley" in class, which means: when a design has the shape of a human being but is not exactly like a human being, it will give people a horrible feeling.

The "human" turned "humanoid plant" in the film "Annihilation".

Compare the real world：

Taken in Hawaii in 1996 by Laszlo Kestay, the photo shows a scientist smiling over a dark mass of intertwined shapes that eerily resemble human corpses. At the bottom of the pit is an ominous red opening. Turns out, the "bodies" are actually hardened lava formations, and the fiery hole is known as the West Kamokuna lava skylight.

https://curious.com/curios/10757#date

Example 4: Use of shape language

The course also covers the "Design of shape Languages".

The conceptual design in Pan's Labyrinth changed the monster's features, with the monster's eyes growing on the palms of its hands, highlighting the design points while enhancing the visual richness, and adding a sharp triangular graphic feel to the monster's face (adding a sense of sharp aggression).

Pan’s Labyrinth | Film Quarterly

Screenshots from the film Pan's Labyrinth

Example 5: Transformation process between human and inhuman

screen shot from the seventh episode of “Love, Death & Robots” series-"BEYOND THE AQUILA RIFT".

Watch Love, Death & Robots | Netflix Official Site

Originally it looked like a female silhouette(human) - up close (after changing the lighting) it became a monster(inhuman)!

This is all for now~

Reference:

Annihilation (2018) Directed by Alex Garland [psychological horror film]. United Kingdom United States : Paramount Pictures ( North America and China) Netflix (international).

Pan's Labyrinth (27 May 2006) Directed by Guillermo del Toro [dark fantasy film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.

Love, Death & Robots (March 15, 2019 – present) Directed by Tim Miller [adult animated anthology television series]. American : Netflix Studios.

The Last of Us (TV series) (January 15, 2023 – present) Directed by Craig Mazin Neil Druckmann Available at: HBO MAX (Accessed: 14 November 2023 ).

Kestay，L . (2017) Underworld portal . Available at: https://curious.com/curios/10757#date (Accessed: 14 November 2023 ).

[adarkrainbow]

The Yaga journal: Trade in cannibalism

The next article of the journal is called “A trade in devouring: cannibalism as a way fo exchanging and transforming for Baba Yaga”, by Jane Sinnett-Smith. 

Baba Yaga as depicted in the Hellboy (2019) movie

Just like her jumping mortar and her chicken-legged isba, cannibalism as an integral part of the typical portrait of Baba Yaga: she is in people’s mind a ferocious witch that devours the children that get too close to her domain. The cannibalistic tales of Baba Yaga are found to be extremely rich in transformations - if meeting Baba Yaga is perceived as a moment of initiation, where the protagonist turns from a child into an adult, cannibalism itself operates numerous transformations that blur the line between subject and object, human and animal, inside and outside. In this article, the Baba Yaga’s devouring will be linked to the transformation of the hero - with a context the complex web of exchanges and gifts inside the fairytale world.

The studied texts for this article can be vaguely placed into two categories. On one side, the fairytales where the hero has to run away from the oven of the Baba Yaga, who in turn tries to cook and devour the hero: it is the group of “The Baba Yaga and the Smart One”, “The Baba Yaga and Filiouchka”, “Ivachko and the witch”, “Small-Tomas”, and a variant of “Prince Daniel,words of honey”. It is in essence the story of how Baba Yaga kidnaps a little boy away from his family to devour him, and how the hero vanquishes her and returns to his home. He escapes through cunning: when the daughter of Baba Yaga tries to have him climb into the oven, he pretends that he does not understand how to do it - and as soon as the daughters shows him the proper way, he pushes her in the oven. The Baba Yaga eats her own daughter unwillingly, and the boy escapes - in some variations the hero actually tricks and burn Baba Yaga instead of her daughter.  The motif of the oven is also found in the variation of “Prince Daniel, words of honey” mentioned earlier, but in a deformed way: it is the only tale of this category (all come from Afanassiev’s fairytales) where the protagonist is a girl. This tale is an hybrid mixing elements of other fairytales: the hero is here a princess trying to escape from her brother, who wants to marry her. She flees in the hut of the Baba Yaga, but Baba Yaga’s daughter, instead of trying to cook her, rather helps her escape, helpng the princess trick the Baba Yaga, and the two girls flee together as the Baba Yaga burns in her oven. (People have identified this fairytale as probably a literary invention rather than an actual folktale).

The second group of tales is centered around a kind young girl who can escape thanks to a series of exchanges with the creatures she meets in her adventures, or with the Baba Yaga herself. This is a group made of “The Wild Geese”, “The Baba Yaga and Vassilissa the Beautiful”. The kindness of the protagonist and her desire to help the strangers she meets is rewarded by them helping her in return, and this help allows the the girl to escape Baba Yaga. In “The Wild Geese”, the heroine tries to help her little brother snatched away by Baba Yaga because she was neglectful. On her way to Baba Yaga’s house, she meets numerous animated objects - a bread oven, an apple tree, a river of milk, who hide her from Baba Yaga’s fury after asking her for things. In the fairytale simply called “The Baba Yaga”, it is the girl, sent to the isba of the Baba Yaga by her wicked stepmother, that must give services to the servants of Baba Yaga so that they will let her flee. Vassilissa the Beautiful doesn’t enter easily into one or the other of these two categories, even though it is very similar to “The Baba Yaga”. Vassilissa is sent by her evil stepmother, who wants to get rid of her, seek fire in the witch’s house. Baba Yaga promises to help if she accomplishes impossible tasks, which she manages thanks to the help of a magical doll, a gift of her deceased mother. Baba Yaga allows her to leave with the fire, fire which will burn her wicked stepmother and stepsisters, before Vassilissa marries a prince and lives happily ever after. 

Eating is by its very nature an act of transformation: the external food becomes an internal element, part of the eater’s body. From the exterior to the inside, from an individual to a part of a greater body. When this transformative eating becomes a cannibal eating, there are even more transformations - sinister ones. With Baba Yaga, cannibalism threatens the limits between human and animal, living and unliving. 

The tale of Vassilissa the Beautiful describes the witch eating humans “like chickens”. Eating a person turns a human (aka an eater, a predator) into a chicken (an animal, an eaten one, a prey). The Baba Yaga threatens the superiority of the humanity in the natural world, animalizing humans. In fact, through this transformation we are even reminded that humans are nothing more than a superior category of animals. 

The Baba Yaga seems to only recognize other beings from a culinary perspective: she only perceives people as meals or food. In “The Baba Yaga”, upon seeing the protagonist she immediately claims she wants to make them her lunch ; in “Prince Daniel, words of honey”, the daughter of the Baba Yaga lets a group of passerby leave because they were “too old” and thus “too old for her mother’s teeth”. This objectification of people into food takes its most drastic turn in “Baba Yaga and Filiouchka”, where the daughter of the Baba Yaga is locked in the oven and roasted. In this tale, the daughter of “the brown Yaga” is tricked by Filiouchka into climbing on the oven’s shovel, and Filiouchka promptly throws her in the oven. Once she is roasted, he takes her out, covers her in fat, places her on a plate, covers the whole with a cloth and puts everything in the cupboard. When “the brown Yaga” arrives, she immediately fetches the roast. .The active agent of the tale that is the daughter of the Baba Yaga, this character who has dialogues and appears as an independant agent with thought and actions, is reduced to a mere ingredient in a recipe, and her too is victim of her mother’s appetite. 

In many studies of cannibalism, there is something highlighted: cannibalism has the purpose of transforming the cannibal. It is an initiation to reach maturity, or it is a way to be incorporated in a community - the most extreme example possibly being the eucharisty of Christianity. Baba Yaga however does not change, no matter how much she eats people - her cannibalism does not transform her. Cannibalism is rather her defining trait - be her benevolent or malevolent, she stays the Baba Yaga. But the rest of the article wants to prove that, even if the Baba Yaga is not transformed by her cannibalism, she is still influenced by it - as by devouring her victim, she absorbs it in her own body, and thus her body is made of the sum of all those she killed - in the fairytales, the identity of the Baba Yaga and her victim end up looking a lot like each other.

It is important to note that, despite the numerous threats and references of cannibalism, the farytales rarely depict the Baba Yaga actually satisfying her cannibal appetites. Usually, the threat of the Baba Yaga stays a threat - it is a challenge the protagonist must overcome. And the victory over the witch and her cannibalism is ensured by exchanges. Each tale showing Baba Yaga as a devourer in Afanassiev’s collection also depict a form of exchange, mercantile or symbolic. Of course, exchange are not exclusive to the cannibalism tales, but their omnipresence in these tales cannot be denied.

The Baba Yaga rarely starts the exchange herself. In “Vassilissa the Beautiful” or “Ivachko and the witch”, she uses cannibalism as a threat to make sure the terms of exchange are respected. She tells Vassilissa that if she works hard for her, she will give her fire, else she will eat her. The exchange here determines Vassilissa’s position: if she does the chores of the Baba Yaga, she is allowed to take part in the exchange, by exchanging a service for the fire. If she fails however, she becomes the exchange object, or rather the taken object, reduced to a meal. This exchange is clearly unfair, since the chores of the Baba Yaga are impossible. Baba Yaga breaks the regular nature of the exchange by imposing an injustice that favorizes her - she tries to benefit from all of Vassilissa’s work without giving anything in exchange. This unfair trade is even more obvious in Ivachko and the witch: when she asks the smith to make her a sweet voice, she treatens to eat him ; and she reuses the threat when she asks him to make her iron teeth. Cannibalism is a threat that allows her to escape the world of trade - since the blacksmith is paid not by earning something, but by a lack - being safe from the devouring. Is it even an exchange? Baba Yaga receives something without giving anything in exchange. While in many other fairytales she is a giver of advice, or a purveyor of magical gifts, as  a cannibal she stays outside of all trades, she refuses to perform exchanges, she only exists as a being of demands and taking. But since this trade and exchanges unite society, she clearly places herself as outside of society, outside of the community. 

If these two tales depict her isolated and “closed” nature, whose world is separated from the normal one, the fairytales of “the kind girl and her exchanges” form a great contrast. In these tales there are fair trades: the girl gives, and in return receives help. In The Wild Geese, the importance of this fair trade is highlighted: the first time the hero [Note: I just realized now that the female “heroine” does not exist in the English language, or at least isn’t used regularly, and normally I should write “hero” all along... so sorry for that] is on her way to the isba of Baba Yaga, she meets entities she refuses to help. Each time the being tells her it will reveal where the geese are carrying her brother, in exchange for a service: the oven wants her to eat her bread, the apple tree wants her to eat an apple, the river of milk wants her to drink from it... But she refuses, and merely demands the information for free. That is to say, she is acting just like the Baba Yaga. It is only when she meets them again, fleeing away from Baba Yaga, that she agrees to the demands, and in doing so ensures her survival.  This tale dramatizes the topic of trade and exchange as the cement of all communities and societies - the girl recognizes the importance of her giving or helping in order to receive, and so her action of eating acts as a trade. The threat of the cannibal turns the female hero, from an egoistical character, into a character understanding the notion of debts and the obligation to give in order to receive (or give back after receiving). So this tale is a lesson in how to become part of society: the girl rejects the world of selfish consumption (the Baba Yaga) and removes the trait that makes her similar to the witch ; she becomes a social character involved in a system of obligations that ultimately gives her what she wants. What saves her is the act of eating - or rather the act of sharing food, one of the strongest gestures that build a community. By exchanging food and services, the girl gains help, forms links, and creates her own community. 

So, the encounter between Baba Yaga and the protagonist is a confrontation between one world and another. In Vassilissa the Beautiful, this encounter not only confronts two models (taking vs sharing), but also two types of consumption. Vassilissa is sure to not be eaten by Baba Yaga because she gives food to her magical doll, who in exchange helps her. Vassilissa escapes one form of devouring (the Baba Yaga’s devouring) through another (the meals of the doll). Baba Yaga exists in a world of solitary consumption, selfish consumption; she eats enough to feed ten people, a food that has been cooked by Vassilissa, and in exchange she leaves the girl a few crumbs. But by feeding the dool, Vassilissa makes a trade, receiving something in return. It is even more interesting to note that Vassilissa often deprives herself of meals to feed her doll. She sacrifices her share of food to have it eaten by her doll, sacrifices herself for the doll - but we should note that it isn’t a selfless action. She sacrifices herself, but in exchange of a true and clear reward. This is very typical of the system of exchanges in societies - even when an object is given under the appearance of a gift, the very act of giving implies obligations and demands, and refunds.

The tale “The Baba Yaga”  confirms the fact that the trades of the protagonist are out of pure interest: just like in the topos of the kind little girl, the female hero’s exchanges with the community ensures the success of her flight, but it is the hero herself that proposes those exchanges to the servants of Baba Yaga - she gives a scarf to the servant to have the logs covered in water, she gives ham to the cat so he doesn’t scratch her eyes out, she gives bread to the dogs so they won’t rip her to pieces, she gives oil to the gate to let her pass without creaking, she gives a ribbon to the birch tree so it doesn’t scratch her. The gift is key here: just like with Vassilissa, the young girl here transforms the selfish consumption of Baba Yaga, and replaces it by a shared consumption. When Baba Yaga asks her servants why they betrayed her, they complain that she never paid them for their services, while the girl was ready to do so. If “The Wild Geese” teaches that you can’t receive without giving, “The Baba Yaga” implies that nobody can give without having a reward. Even the generosity of the girl has obligations, since she gives the scarf to the servant in the same sentence where she gives her orders - she gives her gifts in the hope of a remuneration. So it isn’t just a selfless sharing, it is clearly a mercantile action, a selling and buying of services. Meeting the Baba Yaga teaches the protagonist (and the other members of her community) that services have a mercantile value. By acting like a merchant, not only does the girl transforms the nature of the system around her, but also changes her own status: from a victim of cannibalism, from an object traded (she was sent by her stepmother to Baba Yaga to be devoured), she becomes the vanquisher of Baba Yaga, and the acting party of the exchange, giving and receiving.By changing her place in the trading process, she escapes the cannibalism of Baba Yaga - but given how easily she imposes orders to the creatures that surround her, and given how easily they serve her rather than their original mistress, we could say that somehow the victim and Baba Yaga end up looking alike... 

The tales with an oven explore further the similarity between Baba Yaga and her victim: the victim is exchanged with the daughter of the witch, and it is one of the rare cases where Baba Yaga is actually seen devouring, as the ignorant hag eats her own child. If the devouring of the hero was refused by the logic of the fairytale, where Good must vanquish Evil and not the reversed ; the devouring of the daughter maintains this moral system. Even more; the fact that Baba Yaga devours her daughter keeps the transgressive devouring inside a familial community - so it doesn’t “spread out” and corrupt the rest of human society. And in the most extreme tales, “Baba Yaga and the Smart One” or “Prince Daniel”, it is Baba Yaga herself who is locked up in her oven - the threat is destroyed, she will not endanger society again. So, Baba Yaga switch place with the victim, and the victim becomes a vanquisher - from an innocent child, the victim becomes a clever protagonist. From vulnerability we reach power - and it confirms that the hero is now accepted in society. This confirms the encounter of Baba Yaga as an initiation. Most of the protagonists are little boys, and Andreas Johns considered that the hero’s refusal to enter the oven, meant breaking off ties with the mother (of which Baba Yaga is a double), by refusing to enter her oven/belly. The hero suddenly understands that he can do trades and exchanges just like adults, and thus grows into a member of society. But, at the same time, the fact that he gleefully burns Baba Yaga and her daughters in the oven indicates that he matches her: he adopts very quickly the role of Baba Yaga, and blurs the line between the two worlds. To prove and make triump the values of society, the protagonist must lock Baba Yaga in her own system.

The tale of Prince Daniel points out how the removal of the unpleasantness embodied by Baba Yaga is an ambiguous process. Instead of tricking and burning the daughter of Baba Yaga, the female hero creates a community with the daughter of the witch. The daughter steals the protagonist away from Baba Yaga by turning her into a needle, then they lock together Baba Yaga in the oven, and the daughter of the witch ends up marrying the brother of the protagonist. Even though she helps the hero, this relative of Baba Yaga still has worrying elements. By turning the hero into a needle, she makes her undergo the same process of objectification that Baba Yaga does by eating people. The fact this child of Baba Yaga joins society through a wedding suggest that the clear frontier between the cannibalistic/antisocial/selfish world of Baba Yaga and the world of exchange and trades of the community, maybe isn’t as closed and certain as it seems: the threat of the “selfish cannibalism” is still possible inside the sharing community. Even more worryingly... It is said that the female protagonist and the daughter of Baba Yaga looks identical, which suggests that maybe the values supported by the tale and the “corruption” of the Baba Yaga don’t really look that different... 

In conclusion, we see that Baba Yaga’s cannibalism can be useful to create a society. The trades the protagonist must undergo to escape her threat allows them to enter the community, and defines its limits. A clear wall is built between the world of Baba Yaga, where you take without paying and where you never share, and the world of the hero, where trades are fair and cause a mutual profit. We have here both idealism and mercantilism: these tales teach a responsability towards the community (you have to receive and give back) as well as a feeling of rights (you awaits to be rewarded for your actions). But cannibalism is by nature an act that breaks frontiers, blurs the line between human and animal, between animate and inanimate, between the accepted and the excluded - and despite their best efforts, the fairytales cannot ultimately destroy all of Baba Yaga’s cannibalism, they cannot build a strong and clear limit between her world and ours. This results in an ambiguity which teaches the community to always be vigilant. As the protagonists trade away to escape the clutches of the hag, they can end up becoming like her instead of splitting away from her. It is the paradox of the fairytales.