#like no women now have autonomy over their own child bearing bodies….. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

somepsychopomp · 1 year ago

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its avatar time

lol i was trapped on a commute that was like 2 hours longer than expected today and drafted up the start to an ATLA fic I've been wanting to write. There's definitely bits I want to expand on but I'm posting it now just to share for fun

the actual fic will be a very zuko-centric AU, but somehow I ended up writing a hearty prelude (featuring Ursa's POV as she has her first child)

Ig the only warning is that this does feature some old timey women-not-having-it-good themes. Like there's discussions of child bearing and bodily autonomy but it's not too heavy imo. But i absolutely loved writing from Ursa's POV and hope to do more with this AU soon

(also- if u have any idea what's up with baby zuko, i wanna hear what your guess is!)

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Excerpt:

The sages and midwives cleansed the babe and swaddled him, as well as dabbed Ursa’s own tear-streaked face with a cool cloth, before finally permitting her to hold her own child.

Ozai already had a name picked out for him.

“Hello, Zuko.” Ursa said. After the day she had, her voice was little more than a hoarse rasp.

Her son opened his eyes and cried.

Ursa’s stomach plummeted.

Her child was wrong.

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Word count: ~2,900

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Lady Ursa came into her new family with much fanfare, as was expected of a royal wedding. Her new husband insisted upon her superb beauty to all that would hear and lavished her with gifts of fine silk and golden adornments. Spoils of war, as well. Their marriage bed was crafted from highly polished dark wood, inlaid with pearls from the South Pole and abalone imported from the coasts of the Earth Kingdom.

But what her nation did not know as well as she did, was that her husband was not a patient man. Not at all.

Ozai was a man of great elegance, yes. He moved as though no man could best him, as though he were a greater being from another realm. But he possessed a terribly watchful eye. And what he wanted more than Ursa’s beauty or her love was her body. He wanted an heir.

First, he wasted no time consummating their marriage. The man seemed determined to appease his father by getting Ursa pregnant before she could fully remove her wedding gown.

The heat that came off his skin as he held her close was enough to suffocate her.

Ursa did her damndest to satisfy him. She let herself be followed every moment of every day by a legion of medical experts, sages, and attendants who instructed her how to best have her first child. They dictated when she woke up, the temperature of her baths, her food, her dress, her exposure to sunlight, the bitter teas meant to influence her body’s moods, and when she went to bed every night.

They were at their most insistent in the early months of her marriage. She didn’t even have both feet past the threshold of the palace, technically not even a wife yet, before she was whisked away to some private room, told to strip before all their eyes, and examined to a humiliating degree for any bodily deficiencies to be concerned over. They deemed her perfectly healthy and said that with the proper diet and tea, she’d be giving birth by next summer.

But that precious early stage of her marriage, those cool and gentle months between summer and winter, came and went without her menstrual cycle ceasing. Autumn was the most auspicious time for women in the Fire Nation to become with child, as it meant their babies would be born in the hottest months of the year under Agni’s brilliant eye.

But for all his determination, for all the efforts made, winter came in full and Ursa was still bleeding monthly.

That was when she began to pray. She prayed every morning at sunrise and every evening at sunset. In her bedroom, at the royal family’s personal shrine, in the capital’s grandest temple. Sometimes for hours at a time without rest. The sages approved greatly of her devotion. The doctors disapproved, as she could not partake in food or drink while in prayer.

Ursa begged Agni for a baby. She begged for Ozai’s furious advances to cease. Since her wedding night, she had crawled out of bed every morning sore and tender, made even more humiliating when her attendants slathered her most intimate parts with potent oils or creams to soothe the aching and chafe.

Her body was no longer hers, she knew that. But please, was she not devoted to her new husband and her country? Was she not healthy? Why was she being tested so?

Above all else, Ursa asked for something to hope for.

The new year came and went. The nation was alight with all sorts of colors in the sky and endless trails of beautiful lanterns, but it was a cold comfort for Ursa.

Both she and Ozai grew rather distant and demoralized as winter gave way to spring. Or rather, she grew demoralized as her husband grew distant. They sometimes went days without speaking to each other. Yet they retired to the same bed without fail every night. They had no choice.

Her husband began regarding her with this cruel tint to his eyes, as if she were to blame for his lack of progeny. Ursa was afraid of him.

Then, in that delicate time early in the year between late winter and young spring, she found her cycle late. The sages and doctors ran their tests. Ursa felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She almost dared not believe it could be true.

But it was. The palace was jubilant, ecstatic even. Lady Ursa was finally with child.

The sages brought this wonderful news to the Fire Lord, presenting Ursa and Ozai as if they were mere trinkets, more spoils of war. It was a less ideal time of the year to have a baby, yes. This did not go unnoticed by Ozai or his father, the two of them so alike in their dispassionate eyes. But the sages spun a tale of how, as the new year emerges from the ashes of the past, much like the great phoenix, so did Fire Lord Azulon’s great and prosperous bloodline.

His newest grandchild was a symbol of vitality, of hope.

Ursa straightened her back, as did her husband.

And Fire Lord Azulon seemed pleased. He even gazed upon Ursa directly and congratulated her on her first child, implying he’d expect more in the future.

A hand touched her belly and Ursa was surprised to find it wasn’t her own. Ozai caressed her gently, though there was no bump to be had. Not yet. He smiled at her and she could feel the heat from his palm seeping through her clothes and soaking into her skin.

Her child would likely be born in the densest portion of winter, when the days were short and the nights were so very long. They would be a strong child, the sages said, as any creature must be to weather out those dark, bitter months.

There was only one problem. Two, even.

One, Ursa went into labor the night before the winter solstice. For first time mothers, they sometimes went several days before properly giving birth. She almost hoped this would be the case, but Ursa was not so fortunate. Why would she be?

Amongst her tears and fervent screaming, her first child was born after sunset on the shortest day of the entire year. As if Agni himself deigned to fit her with as many ill omens as possible. At least the birth itself was without complications.

Oh, and it was a boy. Not that female heirs were unheard of, nor would it be a travesty for Ozai, who was himself only second in line to inherit the throne. But who would want to disrupt the current dynasty’s male-dominated line of succession after so long?

Ozai would be quite pleased to know his firstborn was male.

The sages and midwives cleansed the babe and swaddled him, as well as dabbed Ursa’s own tear-streaked face with a cool cloth, before finally permitting her to hold her own child.

Ozai already had a name picked out for him.

“Hello, Zuko.” Ursa said. After the day she had, her voice was little more than a hoarse rasp.

Her son opened his eyes and cried.

Ursa’s stomach plummeted.

Her child was wrong.

His skin was fair and pale, his downy baby hair dark and plentiful, his body healthy.

But his eyes…

They reminded Ursa of the beautiful gemstone pendant her mother once wore, a family heirloom from before the war. It was a precious stone more commonly found in the Earth Kingdom than the Fire Nation, a glowing and iridescent opal.

Her child had opal eyes. Half his irises were the rich, bright amber yellow of the royal family. It was undeniably the hue of Ozai’s own eyes. But dispersed throughout the baby’s irises were shards of bright, cerulean blue.

But there was nothing she could do or say. The midwife was letting her husband into the room to view his progeny. Everyone else was leaving to give them a brief moment of privacy, odd after the months of stealing every ounce of autonomy from her. Ursa prayed the baby would seal his eyes and hide his abnormality.

Ozai came upon the side of her bed, footsteps light and a bright smile upon his face. He peeled back a bit of the blanket for a better look.

“Wait-” Ursa said.

Ozai faltered. Not at her request, no. But because he felt the need to recoil from the sight of his child.

“Sages!” he called, not looking at her, “I want the head sage in here immediately!”

Ursa couldn’t say she remembered what happened after that. Only that she was afraid of the venom in Ozai’s voice.

He wanted them to take the baby and ensure that it was indeed his. Ursa didn’t know what kind of rituals they could enact, which spirits they could call upon, to prove that the child was indeed Ozai’s. All Ursa knew was that Zuko could belong to no other man, not that her word held much weight.

Ursa was kept isolated from the rest of the royal family, and her own child, with only a servant and her midwife for company and care. Half of her wanted her baby back. She needed the protection he offered her, where his living body would cease Ozai’s relentless assault upon her own. She could finally cease waking up throbbing every morning, cease the constant monitoring and control over her body, and enter the family as a proper princess.

Half of her was terrified of the baby, of what it could mean for them both if the sages found his lineage inconclusive.

Several days later, her husband entered her quarters with the head sage and the child.

“It is my great honor,” the old man said, ��to confirm that this child is indeed the legitimate offspring of Prince Ozai.”

He came to Ursa and allowed her to hold her baby for the first time since his birth. Zuko was no longer crying, instead making these soft sounds from behind closed lips. It seemed to her that he was wanting something. Her touch or milk, perhaps?

When the old man and her attendants all left, when it was just husband, wife, and child in the room, Ozai did not approach her. He just stared at the small mass in her arms swaddled in silk.

“The sages could prove that boy might be mine, but we’ll be lucky if he lives to see his hundredth day.” Ozai said softly. He wrinkled his nose in displeasure, “I am no fool. All the omens indicate he will be weak. Cursed, even. If there is any fire in his blood, I know it will be weak and flickering.”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have, but Ursa couldn’t help but snap. She said, “Zuko is still yours, Ozai. His blood is your blood, and his fire will be your fire.”

He scoffed at her, turned his back, and left Ursa to tend to their child.

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Ursa knew most children weren’t able to bend until they were a few years old, or their bending was so weak that it was imperceivable. Sometimes it took even longer for them to realize their innate gift if both parents were nonbenders. Only rarely would very young children, tiny souls still mastering the art of walking and talking, display visible signs of bending.

Zuko’s family, however, were very much expecting it.

He really only got to be a baby for a few months before the weight of princely expectations were set upon him.

Ursa would watch as Ozai would ignite a fire at the tip of his finger, no bigger than that of a candle flame, and hold it over their child’s soft, clammy palm. Every time, their baby would recoil from the heat and cry. Zuko refused to take the flame. Ozai would sneer or grit his teeth every time, but he continued to try day after day to get his son to take the flame.

In those moments, it was hard to remember that this strange man was the boy’s father.

Ursa’s small solace came in the form of the sages’ wisdom. They spoke of well documented cases where children metamorphosed early in life, their hair or eyes changing in color before taking on their true hue within a year or so. Ursa didn’t need the explanation, she’d seen it herself. Or heard about it from her mother, at least. She herself had been born with eyes nearly brown in color before they lightened into a dull honey hue by her second birthday. But the explanation did give her hope, however small, that her child would grow to more closely resemble Ozai in the coming years. They just needed a little more time.

Which they would get, it seemed. Zuko lived to see his hundredth day, then first birthday. Ozai never said anything, but seemed to accept that Zuko was not only his child, but that he was also going to live.

And something seemed to change in him.

The summer after Zuko’s first birthday, they went to Ember Island together. No attendants, no guards. Just them as a family. Ozai brought Ursa to his family’s estate on the island, took her shopping, and went with her two nights in a row to the theater. The show they were putting on was such a touching drama that Ursa just had to see it twice, her husband obliging with a kind of abnormally fond patience. He even got up to walk around the empty halls with their little boy whenever Zuko grew restless, all so that Ursa wouldn’t have to miss a minute of the climax.

Baby Zuko, meanwhile, loved sitting in the sand beneath the sun. From morning to night, he relished soaking up the sunlight and the breeze coming off of the ocean. This seemed to please his father, who had a greater tolerance for the heat than Ursa ever could. The two of them would sit out in the sun while Ursa needed the shade provided by a lofty umbrella.

While on a pleasant walk along the shore, Zuko kept wandering toward the water with increasing tenacity. Ursa tried to interest him in the beautiful shells that washed upon the shore, but to no avail. Her son wanted to splash in the water that, while only ankle-deep for her and Ozai, was much more formidable for him. Such a brave, little thing. He did not yet know the dangers of the world, but Ursa was a fool for letting her own guard down.

A sudden swell crashed upon the shore and swept Zuko off his feet. In such a moment, his hand was ripped from hers.

Ursa dove for him, but he was already being pulled by the waves and was out of her reach before she could even utter his name.

She gasped, awestruck, as Ozai threw himself into the shallow water without a hint of grace. In hindsight, Zuko hadn’t really been pulled very far. But he was so small, so fragile. He could not swim. Ozai grabbed the boy and waded through the rough waves back to Ursa, using his body to shield their son from the spray.

Ursa took Zuko and patted him on his back. He wasn’t crying or coughing, he didn’t even seem to understand what had happened to him, but she soothed him all the same. That was when she noticed her husband was bleeding.

Ozai touched the scratch on his abdomen lined with tiny pearls of red blood. It must’ve been from a piece of broken shell, something not yet worn down by the relentless sea. He said it was hardly a cause for concern and in just a few minutes, it ceased bleeding.

Zuko gave thanks to his father by immediately trying to return to the water as soon as Ursa set him down. Ozai snatched him up, but didn’t reprimand his child. Perhaps he knew it’d do little good for a boy so small and curious. Zuko’s feet did not touch the sand for the remainder of their walk.

Thankfully, their vacation concluded without much fanfare.

On the boat ride home, as Ursa watched the clouds drift by with her son in her arms, she dared to believe that maybe, all would be well. That Ozai was merely a man under tremendous, inconceivable pressure to act as the ideal prince. After all, he’d been born into royalty and surely had to contend with things Ursa had not yet conceived of. Perhaps the first year of their marriage was only a rough start. That deep down, Ozai did care for her and Zuko not just as political power, but as his family. It’d just taken stepping away from his royal duties and endless obligations for his true nature to show.

Then there came the day when everything changed. When Ursa knew her life was not in her hands, nor in the hands of her husband, and not even in the hands of her Fire Lord. When she knew her life was dictated by the will of the spirits and theirs alone.

And that her son would never be safe in his father’s house.

#atla #zuko #atla ursa #atla ozai #some spirit chicanery afoot

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ambermaitrejean · 2 years ago

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Abortion in Christofascist USA

Trigger warning: If you are easily offended by strong language, click off now. If you choose to read on, remember this....before the right to free speech is also taken away, know that this is MY BLOG where I am FREE to post or speak whatever I choose. If you choose to comment on this, and you disagree with my statements, I WILL delete your comment. Obviously you have your own blog. Speak your mind there. And don't bother tagging me to read your rebuttal. I have zero fucks to give.

Welcome to the former USA, now openly operating as a Fascist Theocracy. Many years ago I said, "your rights are disappearing at an ALARMING rate." And here we are now, where fully HALF of the citizens in this country, have literally NO SAY in their own medical care, NO legal autonomy over their own bodies, simply because they were born of the female gender. I invite every one of those fascist MFers to go straight to HELL.

If you support gun rights, but claim to be pro-life, fuck off now. You don't get to tell me how you believe every life is precious while our children are gunned down in their fucking classrooms, and that’s okay with you while you condemn those who seek abortions. HOW DARE YOU. Just shut the fuck up. Every single fucking day someone else is shot and killed while you turn a blind eye to MURDER, RAPE, INCEST and BABIES BIRTHING BABIES. I want to VOMIT. And you are completely fine with this. Ohhh, you delusional fucking hypocrite. Your God sees right through you. Your God KNOWS what lives in your heart. Just shut the fuck up.

The small blessing is that I am no longer of child-bearing age, but in no way does that feel like a comfort when I KN0W how this will affect ANY woman or girl in this evil country. I have been on this earth close to 60 years now. I KNOW what being born female means. I was first molested at the age of 6 years old, over the course of an entire summer. I was molested again by a family member at age 14. I was spied on when taking a shower. I was raped at age 21 by a neighbor, that did not result in pregnancy because I was on birth control pills. But you better damn well believe, that should I have become pregnant I would have sought an abortion. Do you think my experiences make me unique? Do you think I’m safe now because I’m older? HELL NO. THIS is what it means to be born female for a vast number of women. At some point in our lives we are faced with some form of sexual abuse: molestation, rape, incest, date rape, sexual harassment, spiked drinks solely for the intent to RAPE, even receiving unsolicited dick pics is a form of sexual abuse. This is OUR reality. Every single fucking moment of every single fucking day. If you think that none of this will ever happen to your very own daughter, your sister, your mother, your aunt, your grandmother, your female friends and co-workers, then you are living under a fucking rock. And now the ultimate punishment of all: being FORCED to carry a baby. It is DISGUSTING and EVIL. NO VICTIM DESERVES SUCH A VILE PUNISHMENT.

And it doesn't even have to be about rape or incest. EVERY SINGLE GIRL AND WOMAN HAS A RIGHT TO HER OWN BODY. THE END. And frankly, it is NONE of your fucking business. NONE AT ALL. And if you do not have a vagina, just seriously SHUT THE FUCK UP. Just fuck off and tend to your own fucking life.

And don't you dare come at me with your fake fucking morality. Just shut the fuck up. Don't shove your false Christianity on me. YOU, who have NO FAITH in your own God. For God said, "vengeance is mine." So if you truly believe in God, if you truly believe God's word- that punishment is God's, then where is your faith? If you truly believe that abortion is murder, WHERE IS YOUR FAITH THAT GOD WILL PUNISH THE SINNERS? Do you feel that way about the men who molest the little children? The men who rape? The men who sexually harass women from every corner of their fucking lives? Or is it ALWAYS a women's fault? Mind your own fucking business. You don't get to claim moral superiority while you keep a fucking gun in your house. You don't get to claim moral superiority while supporting war and capital punishment. You don't get to claim moral superiority while railing against healthcare for ALL, school lunches for children, support for families in poverty. Just shut the fuck up you EVIL hypocrite. Do you think ending legal abortions will stop abortions? How utterly fucking naive. All this will do is force women to seek abortions in shady motels, facing serious consequences to their reproductive health, even DEATH, and the mental mind fuckery this will have on them.

I have been saying it for over 15 years now: this truly is the 21st Century Dark Ages in the USA. And if you think this country sliding into fascist insanity will not effect you because your fucking skin is the "right color", or your fucking religion is the "right one" or that you descended from the "right people" I have news for you: in one way or another, eventually it WILL. Fascism doesn't give a fuck about you. So be careful what you cheer as a "right punishment" for "the others." It's coming for you too. Count on it.

#end of roe vs wade #abortion rights #women's healthcare #abortion in the usa #abortion #women's rights #fascist theocracy #disappearing rights for all #21st century dark ages #i'm livid

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star-anise · 5 years ago

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Thinking about this post (about Labyrinth and teenage girls and dark sexual fantasy) and sexual maturity and like...

Maturity, for human beings to mature, is the unfolding of genetic potential over time and experience. Our brains are born half-baked and have to be shaped by our environment. For example, I was born with the capacity to learn Cantonese; but as nobody ever spoke Cantonese to me, that capacity went unrealized, so if I want to learn it now, I have to struggle to bring those capabilities to fruition.

This comes up in my work in mental health, with regards to emotional maturity. Emotional maturity, in large part, is the ability to perceive and understand your own emotional needs; to be able to tell which are valid and important and which are unhelpful or disproportionate; to have a variety of skills, habits, and abilities which will address those needs; and to be able to tell which ways of coping are appropriate for which situation. We teach classes, entire curriculums, on getting in touch with your emotions and mastering your responses to them.

We don’t talk about “sexual maturity” in nearly the same way. “Sexual maturity” gets talked about like... “Congrats, 10-year-old girl! You’ve got your period, which means you’re now a woman capable of bearing a child! You’re sexually mature!” which is SO fucked up.

Proposing “sexual maturity” in a way parallel to “emotional maturity” kind of shakes me to my bones. I can’t imagine going into all the institutions that shaped me when I grew up and saying, “You are neglecting an important part of the development of the children you serve. For them to become healthy and mature adults, they need to be able to understand their sexual needs and desires, or lack thereof; understand how to judge whether a sexual experience is desirable and healthy, or unhealthy or aversive; to be able to recognize lack of desire or attraction, and be able to set boundaries, reject unwanted intimacy, and refuse unwanted sex; to learn a variety of skills, habits, and abilities (like using fantasy, self-stimulation, artistic expression, role-play, or genuine sexual encounter) with which to meet their needs in healthy ways; to care about the autonomy, feelings, and needs of other people with whom they interact; and to be able to tell which ways of meeting their needs are appropriate given the situation and person they are with.”

Or, well, I can imagine. I can imagine getting thrown out of every school, church, community league, and Girl Guide troop I tried it in. “You want us to teach these children WHAT?” Because suggesting that children be taught about something is tantamount to suggesting they be abused, dragged into a foreign world into which they might hopefully never wander otherwise.

I’ve been digging deep into sex and society lately and am so struck, over and over, with how much my culture of origin (Anglo-European, North American, Christian) absolutely valorizes sexual immaturity. In a world where sex is “dirty”, complete ignorance of sex--both in general, and your own sexuality in particular--is seen as “pure”, as “innocent”. As desirable. The very knowledge of your own sexual desires degrades you as a person.

I guess it’s because I am a Christian, I know a lot of current or former Christians, who feel very betrayed by purity culture’s fundamental promise of a beautiful romantic life: You don’t have to become sexually mature to have all your needs met. They will be met for you. What you have to do to earn this future is to stay pure and don’t understand, express, or explore your sexuality in any way.

This means that we were promised that if we never thought about sex, never thought about what we wanted or needed a day in our lives, one day someone would come along who would know for us and make sure all our needs were met. And the more we tried to understand or meet those needs ourselves, the more we polluted ourselves and ruined our chances of obtaining that beautiful future partnership.

I grew up trying to ignore the bitter stories of former Christians who discovered sex and found it really great and left their faith. But what I found--and what a lot of the people I’ve talked to lately found--was that instead, we discovered our faith, our chastity, wasn’t getting us what we’d been promised; instead it made us dry, desiccated, unhappy, unfulfilled, lonely, and full of shame. We didn’t leave the Church for the arms of a willing lover; we left it for a lonely road to a world where we had to shift for ourselves, and we’d been specifically discouraged from ever learning any of the skills that would let us do that. We left it for Tinder profiles and a bunch of matches we didn’t even know what we’d do with, if we ever got them.

Especially for women, and for LGBTQ+ people--and especially for those of us who are both--this legacy of silence, shame, and neglect isn’t just a trauma in the past; it’s an active impediment to the present and future. We’re pressed in on all sides between dating tips to “Be confident! Just be yourself!”, positivity culture that says, “Love your body! Enjoy having sex!”, and purity police hunting down “deviant perverts” whenever we try to express how shameful and frightening sex can be, or try to imagine our way forward with it. Instead we just pick at each other and post memes about “useless lesbians” and don’t rock the boat by questioning how we got here or how we’re getting out.

The one thing I know about shame is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you feel ashamed, and act like that shame is right, you become even more entrapped in a world of secrecy, silence, and judgment. It’s only when you admit it’s there but deny its legitimacy that you gain any ground.

So I’m talking about it. And I think the only real way forward is for us to... keep talking about it.

#staranise original #let the soft animal of your body love what it loves #lgbt discourse #fandom anti culture

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slightly-radical-universe · 4 years ago

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Indaba, My Children- Review

Indaba, My Children, is a book that compels you to reimagine Africa ,it’s history and the origins of the black man. No- he is not the missing link between ape and humanity ,as previously suggested by “respectable” men of science. Throughout the book, the author emphasizes that little is known about the Black man’s culture ,customs, traditions and religion. This can be attributed to all the strict laws which govern the accessibility , dissemination and acquisition of knowledge in Africa. Very few wise men and women are chosen as “Custodians of tribal history”. These individuals are then tasked with the grave responsibility of being guardians and repositories of all of Africa’s secrets and wonderful mysteries.

Custodians of Tribal History are sown to secrecy through intense rituals and blood oaths. They are never to reveal some of the sacred wisdom which has now been passed down to them- to the average Tom, Dick and Sipho. “Vey little knowledge is passed on to common people and nothing is ever disclosed to strangers” (p.654). The author believes that this impeccable shroud of secrecy surrounding Indigenous African Knowledge is a major contributing factor to inequality and to the racism that has caused much havoc and heartache in the past. He believes that if there were a better understanding between black and white, much bloodshed could’ve been avoided. (He uses Dingana and the death of Piet Retief to illustrate this point). Credo Mutwa, therefore implores the white man to exterminate his ignorance and arrogance and for once learn and understand the black man for what he truly is- How he thinks , the beliefs and philosophies that guide his thinking, his actions and much more. “The African can only be understood in terms of the strange workings of his own mind and those who do not appreciate this may as well refrain from studying the African” (p.655).

Indaba, My Children is thus an attempt to paint a portrait of Africa that the world has never seen before. To demystify the notion that the black man of Africa is a Kaffir- (“ A man without a soul , an unbeliever and a person who can never see the paradise of Allah” - Arab definition as detailed in p.656 ) who has contributed nothing to the advancement and development of humanity at large. This is achieved by taking the reader on a captivating and thrilling adventure through the annals of time. From the very beginning of time when a great nothingness engulfed the earth. To the very first goddess , Ninavanhu-Ma who created the very stars, mountains and oceans and then went on to give birth the human race. We get a glimpse of tribal life in precolonial Africa - the good the great and the not so good.

Women play a very significant role in this great piece of literature. Throughout the story we have many great heroines and rounded female characters. Women can be seen in positions of leadership ,as chieftains and emperors. They are presented as wise , strong and authoritative. There is a synergy and cooperative spirit that governs the men and women. Force and violence against the female body are extremely frowned upon and even punishable by death. Women can therefore practice autonomy over their own bodies and even choose to turn down suitors and marriage proposals.

Tribal law governs the people and absolutely no one is above it. For the preservation of all the laws, customs and traditions of the tribes- everyone must obey all the laws that have been clearly set out. The laws are very strict and they pertain to matters such as- Behavior, rituals , adultery, sex before marriage, theft , murder , abortion ,rape and overall conduct. There are about one hundred such laws and they often contradict those which have been superimposed on Africans by foreigners. When a law is broken a suitable punishment is carried out by the “Tribal avengers”. The punishments are very crude and unforgiving, they are the grimmest part of life pre-colonial life. According to Tribal Law, anyone under 25 years of age is still considered a child and is strictly forbidden to marry or to partake in any form of sexual activities. Failure to adhere to this law is punishable by death.

Polygamy is shown as a normal part of life. Most men take more than two wife's and chiefs really have no limit. The author states that : “ A fallacy dear to many people is that polygamy is practiced as a sign of wealth and prestige” (p. xviii). He cautions that that is very far from the truth. According to the coveted high Tribal Law “ A man must have no relations with his wife during her periods of menstruation or during the entire period while she breastfeeds a baby... Opposition to polygamy encourages extensive immorality and destruction of Bantu family life and traditions. p.633” . It is believed that the males semen poisons the baby's milk. Thus polygamy is crucial in these situations, it ensures that these sacred laws will not be broken. It is also worthy to note that polygamy is not only practiced by males. Yes, a female who goes up the ranks and becomes chieftainess , gets a whopping three husbands all to herself! To top it off , she has to ask for their hand in marriage!

Hair plays a very important symbolism. The “sicolo” hairstyle is worn by married women, usually of royal blood. Different tribes can be identified by their unique hairstyles. “The Strange Ones” are said to have “hair that looks as yellow as corn” and they are identified by their strangely silky , long and shiny hair. The Arabs or “The Feared Ones” are identified as having “fuzzy hair and long beards”.

Slavery , something that was almost alien to Africans , becomes very rampant shortly after the arrival of the first ship. Life as we know it takes a horrid and bitter turn. Suddenly , human beings are sold and traded off like cattle. Fear and terror reign supreme and it seems that the very gods have turned their backs on the black man and woman of Africa. Men and women are made to fight and slaughter each other as a very eccentric and sadistic means of entertainment for the Strange Ones. Human beings are farmed and breed like pigs, to ensure an overflow of good quality slaves. At times, just for fun or experimentation. This dark period in the history of Africa, make the harsh punishments under Tribal Law seem very merciful and humane. The Strange Ones had traditions that were very macabre and blood-chilling. For instance, when their emperors died, he was buried along with his living wife and half of his slaves! There is also mention of traitor tribes, who betrayed the black race by banding together with the Strange Ones as well as the slave-raiding Arabi and sold off millions of African men and women to save their own backs. And also for gaining wealth and favors from the straight-haired foreigners.

Christianity is first introduced by the arrival of the “Potugeesa” in page 521. It is a completely foreign and alien concept and only symbolized by the statuette carried by the foreigners. “ ...ten more of the aliens emerged from the forest led by the one wearing a dark-brown robe reaching to his ankles. He was carrying a staff on the top of which was a bronze statuette of a man of some race, nailed to a cross of wood by his hands and feet ”. Africans lived a life in harmony with nature and were guided by their gods , and various traditions and customs. They could discern right from wrong and governed themselves accordingly.

Vusamazulu Mutwa breaks his sacral oath of silence as a high witchdoctor and chosen custodian as a last and desperate attempt to save the dying knowledge and customs of his people. “Why are we expected to abandon our way of life- our culture and traditions- and suddenly adopt others which are extremely strange to us? p.691 ” . In fear of Africa being turned into “a soul-less carbon copy” of her colonizers, Mutwa bears it all. “Oh! my indolent and gullible Africa- the superior aliens glibly talk of bringing “the light of civilization” to your shores. And yet the only civilization they can bring is one infected with physical, moral and spiritual decay p.691”. Mutwa, believes that by bringing forth Africa's not-yet- forgotten past , we can weave a better understanding and corporation between Black and White, and dispel blatant mistruths and strongly held beliefs such as the one published in the Sunday Times “...The White man is superior to the Black, because apart from a few crude drawings in crude caves, nothing cultural, scientific and social has ever been achieved by a black...” (E. Morris, Johannesburg, on August, 1962 ).

Indaba My Children is truly a work of genius. Its written in a compelling and enchanting style that is on a league of it’s own. The reader is thoroughly entertained and goes through a whirlwind of emotions ranging from amazement , pity , fear and anger to name a few. “A person who is not familiar to Africa and its people might find it difficult to understand this story, let alone read between the lines p.529” It does not follow the “classic”, western three-act structure of story-telling and the perspective of the story-teller jumps back and forth between the main characters, the author and even animals! Parts of the story are told from the point of view of the animals. This draws the reader in the mind of these beasts and it is a powerful way of showing that animals have a mind and consciousness of their own. It also signifies the sacred relationship between the pre-colonial African and the animals in his environment. This story is said to be “...a strange mixture of historical fact and legendary fantasy, a strange mixture of truth and nonsense”. This story is not intended only as a means of entertainment, but is also educational in that it is said to embody tribal history and law. It is written in a way that it can be enjoyed by both old and young.

#indabamychildren #credomutwa #book review

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brightening-glance · 5 years ago

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So I was inspired by @kiragecko to create a floor plan of Wayne Manor. I started out trying to be accurate to the comics, but eventually gave up because it changed so many times that was impossible. This is more like the manor shown in recent comics, specifically from when Dick and Damian were Batman and Robin, but I also pulled references from a bunch of different comics and from different timelines and the Gotham tv show. At this point this is the floor plan for the mashed up canon that exists in my head. Aside from @kiragecko’s own floor plan, other references included Biltmore, Filoli, Casa Loma, The Breakers, Rosecliff, Marble House, and Darlington/Crocker Mansion. I tried to make it mostly to scale, although I hand drew this and then cleaned it up digitally, so it’s probably a little off in some places. Blue text is what the current Wayne/Batfamily use the rooms for, green is what the historical use was, and black is what they’d likely be listed as on a real estate listing. Green doors are hidden or jib doors, basically doors that aren’t obvious but don’t require a pass code to get through or lead to the Batcave. Purple “doors” are the secret passages like the one hidden behind the grandfather clock that even an observant bystander shouldn’t be able to find and involve much more security. More explanations under the cut.

So the comics are unclear on how the Waynes got Wayne Manor. They say that Nathan van Derm designed it for Darius Wayne, but then also that Darius’s grandsons, Solomon and Joshua, purchased it after Jerome van Derm died. At some point after Joshua died (in 1860), the manor was abandoned and Solomon’s son Alan (Bruce’s great-great-grandfather) rebuilt it.

In my head, the east and west wings of the W would have been later editions. The first version of the manor, up to at least when Alan Wayne rebuilt it, would have probably just been the central portion, out to the 2 towers. Original kitchen would have been in the basement, as well as additional servants quarters. It’s not shown on the plans, but in this version the basement has been renovated to include a gym, movie room, and game area (leaving aside the much cooler basement underneath.) Also not pictured is the third floor/attic, which includes servants quarters and a third floor sitting room above Thomas Wayne’s den that looks out over the front lawn.

With the east and west wings, you can see the very clear divisions in purpose. The west wing was a guest wing, probably added when serious entertaining became a thing, with a dedicated ballroom and guest bedrooms. The east wing downstairs was the servants’ wing - kitchen, staff dining room, butler’s pantry, bedrooms for upper household staff. East wing upstairs was the children’s/nursery wing.

In the center of the house you can see a male/female divide that went with the historical idea of some rooms (billiard room/smoking room/study/library) being “men’s spaces” and some (drawing room/morning room) being “women’s spaces. The bedrooms for the permanent residents of the manor in the 1860s (Solomon and his wife, Joshua, Celestine) follow this divide as well, though unlike other “great houses” Wayne manor didn’t go so far as to have a separate bachelor’s wing.

Regarding the jib doors vs secret passageways - secret passageways are basically entrances to the batcave, although they would’ve also been used by Solomon and Joshua as part of the underground railroad. Off the servery you can see the entrance to the wine cellar where Joshua’s body was eventually found. The jib doors (in green) would have been used by servants or family members to pass between rooms without going into the main hallways. Great for sneaking up on people!

Ok, going into some more specifics - headcanon time! Basically everything beyond this is just in my head, and the Batfam stuff is set at some point in the future. (It’s a really shame they stopped writing Batman Comics right after Bruce came back from they dead. Ric? Ric who? don’t know what you’re talking about).

First, Celestine Wayne. Celestine Wayne is not a comic character. She was loosely inspired by the history of the Waynes from Gotham the tv show, and by loosely I mean her name and the fact that she lived during the Civil War era. There is a C.L. Wayne from that time period who founded the Gotham Botanical Garden in the comics, and in my head they are definitely the same person. In the Wayne family tree in my head her father was Caleb Wayne, and she was Solomon and Joshua’s cousin who became their ward for.......reasons undecided yet. Her father was leading wagon trains and so never home. Something else happened. You pick! She never married (imagine whatever reason you want here, I tend to stay away from the tv show explanation and go with she just wasn’t interested, but any reason works) and so when she became an adult and was still living at the manor but not the “lady of the house” the floor plan was slightly modified to give her her own suite of rooms. Joshua Wayne has something similar in the sense of having his own private study next to his room, although his were only connected by secret passage. Sometime between Dick moving out and Tim moving in permanently, Dick moved from his childhood room into these rooms (leaving Tim free to move into his old bedroom, a thing that actually happened in the comics). Maybe this happened when he was adopted? Maybe when he and Bruce kinda reconciled after Bruce got his back broken? Who knows! There was definitely a period where to Dick the Manor was Not His Home Anymore, and so in his mind he probably didn’t have a permanent room there (and tried to avoid staying there). Think of the moving to the “grown up full suite” as a really old fashioned way of Bruce or Alfred or both saying “I recognize you’re an adult with your own life and autonomy and I cannot treat you like a child, but also this is your home and you will always have a permanent place here.”

Other rooms of note - most mansions I referenced did not have a dedicated armoury, but it’s Batman! Of course there’s an armoury. For historical artifacts, a lot of these weapons sure seem functional......

The tea room was not originally a tea room but somewhere along the way at least one of the Wayne matriarchs was very fond of afternoon tea. With Alfred in the manor it is definitely a Space for Afternoon Tea, although it also gets used for other meals occasionally and Alfred will do a lot of his meal planning/any other paperwork there, even though he technically has an office.

When Thomas and Martha were alive, there were actually full time staff living at the manor beyond Alfred and the staff quarters got used, and the “servant’s hall” actually got used as a staff dining room, but now this is where the family members tend to gather if there’s too many of them to just eat in the kitchen. (In my head, Wayne Manor during Thomas and Martha’s life is basically the Wayne Manor described by @unpretty who has written some of my favorite Batman fics ever.)

When Bruce was growing up, Thomas Wayne’s den was the “casual family living room” that every other sitting room in the manor was not, and after he died Bruce couldn’t bear to touch anything in it and avoided it unless he was doing some hardcore brooding. When he moved back/took in Dick, he converted one of the bedrooms to a tv room because he wanted a space that was casual and none of the other spaces felt like a tv belonged in them, but he still couldn’t go in his father’s den. As things have gotten better, and also as Tim and Damian’s relationship improved and Tim started coming around more, Bruce was finally ready to let this go and this became basically Tim’s workspace for whenever he’s at the manor. Bruce will work on stuff in there if Tim is in there, but he still doesn’t spend a lot of time in there on his own. (Ok, this was a little bit inspired by a Rebirth comic, don’t know which one, not gonna find it, I’m sure the rest of it was silly). Bruce tends to use the study downstairs if he’s working on W.E. work or other stuff like that. Jason and Dick’s go to places for any type of homework (when they were living at the manor) or any other work they might have to sit down and do are one of the libraries or wherever Bruce or Alfred are, depending on their mood and what they’re working on, and how long they’ve been living at the manor.

I’m pretty sure Martha Wayne painting/drawing is canon, but I don’t remember the comic it was referenced in. Anyway, she turned what was being used as a sunroom into her art studio because it had the best light. With Damian in the manor it’s slowly being reclaimed by art supplies.

There are definitely rolling mirrors and freestanding barres in the ballroom that Cass uses for dance practice.

Not pictured: the massive garage, stables, tennis courts, basketball courts, gardens, pond, and basically everything on the grounds.

If anyone is curious about what comic panels I referenced (or ignored), or what real world rooms/houses inspired specific parts, shoot me a message! Also, feel free to use this in art/fics/whatever if you want a reference!

#wayne manor #floor plan #dc #batfam #mine #long post #wayne family #i did not intend for this to be this long but then i started writing and this happened #this might change in the future but this is how i picture it in my head now

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niccirobertson · 4 years ago

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Over the past couple of weeks I’ve made a concerted effort to distance myself from just about every news feed and platform that has nothing better to do than report the latest covid statistics. The reason for this is quite honestly, like many people I have had enough. Despite my best efforts, the media bombardment is so pervasive that an update got through, and instead of deleting it, I did the math.

In South Africa at the time of receiving that update there were supposedly 1 039 161 positive cases counted, with 20 033 deaths. I am no maths genius but it wasn’t a stretch to figure out that this was around 2%. I then looked for the data for the United States which is also around 2% and the UK which is around 3%. On average this virus has a mortality rate of 2.5% with the majority of those deaths affecting the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, otherwise known as co-morbidities. Except that the data reflected is questionable.

 When you sift through the conspiracy theories and start talking to credible professionals in the medical industry you begin to see a pattern emerging. Looking at the data of years gone by, pneumonia and flu viruses year on year have also resulted in between a 1% and 2% death rate. So why the hysteria?

 According to the WHO: A pandemic is defined as “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”. The classical definition includes nothing about population immunity, virology or disease severity. By this definition, pandemics can be said to occur annually in each of the temperate southern and northern hemispheres, given that seasonal epidemics cross international boundaries and affect a large number of people. This happens every year but the world doesn’t come to a grinding halt because of it.  

According to the British Medical Journal the PCR test is inaccurate, picking up dead and ineffective virus particles that may be found on most people, most of the time. It states that the PCR test, never designed for this kind of testing has an error margin of 97%. That’s insanity no matter how you want to spin it. If the widely accepted method for determining whether or not a person is infected is fundamentally flawed, the resulting data is completely inaccurate.

Added to which, the death statistics are also questionable. They do not define who died because of the virus or with the virus. For example, a colleague’s mother passed away from pancreatic cancer in July, yet the death certificate states covid19 as cause of death. This is not an isolated incident.

The World Health Organisation guidelines state that “COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death, i.e. COVID-19 is the underlying cause of death”. This means no one really knows how many have died directly from a covid infection. The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine has shown that one in thirteen (7.8%) deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate did not have the disease as the underlying cause of death, further distorting the data.

The decisions directly related to our lives and livelihoods are based on inaccurate or distorted data and no one is doing anything about it.

Enough about the deliberate distortion of the facts. The question is why is this happening? There is a frenetic urgency to get the world vaccinated. Bill Gates began pushing the vaccination agenda way back in 2013 if not earlier. And naturally people, at least people who can still think for themselves are extremely wary of this vaccine. At the time of writing this, the vaccine has only been available for a couple of weeks, and in this short window the significant adverse effects in those already having received the vaccination is 3% based on recent published information. Higher than the death rate of the virus. If you were to go by statistics alone, the vaccine will kill more people than the virus.

The pharmaceutical companies and their stakeholders are naturally elated that the powers that be are enforcing and coercing people into having to accept this vaccine, creating the illusion that their freedom lies on the other side of a needle. And further perpetuating the myth that drugs are going to save you. Bearing in mind that the manufacturers of this technology are free of any kind of liability arising from death or damage caused by a substance that is being trialed simultaneously on millions of people. In simple terms, if the vaccine harms you or renders you infertile you have no recourse.

Recently a second strain of the virus has emerged, This is nothing new - viruses mutate. This is why there is a different flu strain each season. It has been a year since the first strain emerged and as viruses seem to be excellent timekeepers, its right on schedule for an upgrade. This is further going to throw a spanner into the vaccine works. Will the current vaccine work with the new strain or create other complications? If people have indeed contracted the original virus, will taking the vaccine have immune suppressing effects rendering them more vulnerable to other strains? Pregnant women and women of “child bearing age” have been warned by the NHS not to take the vaccine because it may render them sterile or have deleterious effects on the foetus. But its ok to give this unknown quantity to the elderly or your child? I think not.

What happened to freedom of choice? What happened to autonomy? What happened to informed consent? What happened to common sense?  For me personally, the most disturbing part of this experience is how people I thought of as free thinking, intelligent individuals are simply kowtowing, going with the flow because they don’t want to be seen as outliers. It baffles me how so many people are afraid of voicing an opinion. It wasn’t so long ago that the Nazis used this kind of brainwashing and propaganda to commit genocide. And we are going down this path again with our eyes wide open.  

Back in early 2020 governments the world over were advised by the WHO to impose widespread lockdown measures in order to curb the spread of the virus. The media were so distracted with whether or not the virus came from a bat or a pangolin that no one thought to ask if these counter measures at controlling people was the best option for the economies of the world in the first place. No one gave any thought to the destruction that would ensue. How many people would lose their jobs, livelihoods and minds in the process. Because we trusted the people we vote for to do what is in our best interest.

 The second-largest funder of the WHO is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which provides 9.8% of the WHO’s funds, effectively calling the shots! After Trump pulled funding, The World Health Organisation is now effectively owned by Microsoft and China. Bloody terrifying thought that is! 

It is now too late to put the genie back in the bottle. For governments to admit that they acted without a full understanding of the facts or unable to foresee the chaos and destruction that would ensue, going back and admitting they were wrong will result in chaos, crippling class actions and people in power being forced to step down. There will be anarchy. Confidence in governments the world over has been severely compromised not to mention the unstable public option of giant pharmaceutical companies.

The puppet masters at the WHO (Gates) is also a major shareholder in Pfizer. Incidentally the Gates foundation funded the development of the Pfizer owned sterilisation contraceptive Sayana, targeting specifically third world countries. At the risk of joining the ranks of the conspiracy theorists, it seems that the company who gave birth to computer viruses has also given birth to a means of enforced sterilisation.

Getting rid of the elderly and ill, controlling those who are young and able though fear and ensuring that those who can have children are stopped in their tracks. The facts really do speak for themselves, but you can connect the dots?

Perhaps people do nothing and say nothing because they feel that their opinions don’t count? They they won’t be heard amongst the noise created by the media and the hysteria? People don’t speak up because they are afraid of what there peers may think of them. And this is why the greatest tragedies throughout human history happen. People who do nothing. People who say nothing. In the face of glaring evidence that the emperor is wearing no clothes, the average person waits for someone else to take action. We are in a mess and in the hands of people who do not have anyones best interest at heart except for themselves and their own agendas.  

So what good can possibly come from this situation? Thankfully some have realised that their health is in their own hands and no one can save them except for themselves. If you take the steps to stay healthy - eat real food, get decent sleep, surround yourself with positive people and exercise - preferably in the sunlight, chances are you won’t even know if you catch a virus because your body is innately geared towards protecting you from getting seriously ill.

 It has hopefully brought to light the logical realisation that if you aren’t feeling well, stay at home. Wash your hands and don’t sneeze on people.

 With luck, more of us will wake up and realise that no vaccine or drug can save you from bad decisions. Giant corporations are not creating vaccines because they care about you, they care about their profits. If they engineered medicine for altruistic purposes they would be non-profits not multibillion dollar organisations. And perhaps more people will realise that governments and government institutions are controlled by the private sector who are the giants they are, because we, the public created them.

We buy their products, whether the product is software, insurance, junk food or drugs. We created these organisations who are controlling the governments who are controlling us - with fear. With hope more people we will start to see the self perpetuating, destructive cycle that we have come to think of as normal, or maybe not.

 My greatest wish for you in 2021 who ever you are, wherever you are, is to wake up and take responsibility for you own health, your own choices and your own autonomy. Speak up when something doesn’t add up and stop feeding the fear.

 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4916

https://www.icd10monitor.com/false-positives-in-pcr-tests-for-covid-19

https://www.chiropractic.org/informed-consent-and-freedom-of-choice-on-vaccination-issues/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/death-certificate-data-covid-19-as-the-underlying-cause-of-death/

https://sif.gatesfoundation.org/investments/pfizer/

https://www.devex.com/news/big-concerns-over-gates-foundation-s-potential-to-become-largest-who-donor-97377

#dontfeedthefear #covid #bill gates #microsoft #vaccine #pfizer #freedom #yourbodyyourchoice #think

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rootfauna · 5 years ago

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Loss of the chance of life

A while ago I found out my grandmother was one of the many native american women who were forcibly sterilized. I wrote this article.

In 1972 Janet Clifton, an Osage woman, walked into the IHS in Clairemore, Oklahoma. For years she had been having severe pelvic cramps and they had become too much to bear. She was put in a gown and lead to a room in which sat the dreaded stirruped chair many women have despised since it’s invention. The anxiety is understandable even in modern times when women’s healthcare is arguably the most advanced it’s ever been. It’s frightening, then, to imagine approaching that chair in the 60’s and 70’s, when modern women’s healthcare was in it’s infancy, and for a Native American woman, it could be absolutely terrifying.

When Janet signed in to the clinic, she’d been asked the usual questions, one of which was ‘are you married’, which she was, and was asked if she had any children, which she did. Three to be exact. She was only twenty-five and all her children were born just under three years, so it is no surprise that when she was asked if she was religious she replied that she was Catholic. Christianity and native Americans have a strange relationship. The religion was used to justify atrocities done to us too numerous not only for this paper, but for anyone to ever list. Arguably it’s greatest crime was to mold itself into a cardboard beacon, offering native Americans sanctuary from it’s own ugliness. For centuries Native American men made the decision to convert for the rest of the family. The rules of life changed for them, but it’s unclear if they realized the changes it meant for their wives. Their roles in many nations were reduced, as was their agency over their bodies. Contraceptives in their earliest days were known throughout the world, including the Americas, yet now they were forbidden. As ridiculous and ineffective as they could be, they at least offered the illusion of body autonomy, mostly for women.

When Janet went to the IHS the Women’s Health Movement (WHM) had only recently begun, along with second wave feminism. It spoke loftily and justly about abortion rights and about changing the traditional maternity ward practices into more family oriented ones, with the fathers allowed in the delivery room. There was a resurgence of midwifery. However, these improvements did not scratch the blood soaked surface of Native American health care. As Janet lay in the chair, three white doctors entered the room. The Indian Clinic did not have any native doctors, so doctors were driven in from nearby Tulsa Oklahoma, thus continuing the tradition of white doctors working with an exclusively non-white clientele. “I felt like I was being experimented on,” she would later say. She would be in good company. A Google search of “experiments on native women” will instantly bring up several articles about the forced sterilization of Native American women, and many give examples of experimental procedures that were performed in front of many doctors under the guise of research. Janet, who only wanted treatment for what we now know as polycystic ovary syndrome, never knew she would join their ranks. “One of the doctors told me that they were going to burn the cysts off. The procedure was never really explained to me and it was probably a combination of me being a woman and being Native American. They thought I was too dumb to understand anyway.” Had she known more on the subject she might have thought he was referring to a ovarian wedge resection, a common treatment at the time. It involves opening the patient up in an operating theater and exposing the ovaries. The cysts are then carefully removed with a cauterization tool not only keep the cyst from bursting, but to ensure the ovary heals properly. Instead of doing this, Janet and her doctors remained in the exam room where he gave her a local anesthetic, inserted a cauterizing into her vaginally, and performed what was most likely a tubal litigation. This is the most common form of female sterilization and only severs the fallopian tubes. My grandmother’s painful ovaries would remain untouched and untreated.

“I remember smelling something burning,” recalled Janet, “I looked down and saw smoke.”She was sent home directly after the procedure, unaware of what had actually happened to her and uninformed of the possible side effects. There was pain, of course, and in a candid moment she also confessed that she was never able to feel sexual pleasure with her husband again. Worst of all, because there had been no attempt to treat the cysts, and the pain that started the entire ordeal returned within weeks.

Pain seems to be woven into the fabric of every Native American woman’s life and this has not gone unnoticed artists, native and non-native alike. When native women are not posing nude on a biker’s bicep, we are huddled into blankets, riding our horses, our backs bent and heads hung low. Sometimes we stand on hills, gazing at nothing with blank faces and sometimes we kneel by our tipis and look at the ground. Though the past few decades have brought forward more animated depictions of Native American women, my grandmother’s house was filled with the old fashioned kind. As a child, I thought they were pretty, if boring. I never perceived any greater meaning than a woman simply looking down. Maybe she was watching a bug. As a child I was also blissfully unaware of the majority of the atrocities faced by our people and what I did know, I largely new in name only. It wasn’t until I grew older that I’d look at these paintings and think ‘huh, she actually looks kinda sad’. Now I look at these paintings and think ‘she looks utterly defeated’. Knowing what really happened to us makes me notice details I never had before, like how so many of them have textbook thousand yard stares while portraits of chiefs and warriors in the same stye still seem to have fire in their eyes. The men are also more likely to be depicted upright, whether standing or on horseback, still tall in some way or another. The woman have deflated. We slump over our horse’s necks, we kneel, we sit. It seems as though these women have accepted that pain is just something they must endure silently and with dignity, whatever the source. My grandmother is not like these women, so when the pain that had sent her to the doctor in the first place returned, so did she.

The doctors made little effort with pretense this time - she would have a hysterectomy and that was that. At this point there was no reason to try and treat her as Janet could no longer have children, and in the end her hysterectomy would succeed in ridding her of her pain. Why then does it seem to hold so much more significance? European invaders managed to erase many aspects of various indigenous cultures, but some roots run too deep to be completely torn out and in so many of our cultures it was the female ability bring forth life that created the world. The association with women and new life was so strong that even in some nations it was observed that women sewed the seeds for the new crops and tended to them, but it was the men who reaped them. Their reasoning was that women brought life, and men took it. Some Lakota Sioux would not acknowledge a girl’s transition to womanhood until she has had a child. This doesn’t mean that a woman’s only value was her ability to have children and in many nations women held high political power, were religious leaders, and even warriors. Still, it is virtually impossible to completely separate a woman’s potential reproductive capabilities and how she was viewed in societies that place more value on the concept of new life, birth, or rebirth. So many Native American nations fell into this category, and on some level or another, a woman’s womb was sacred. In 1972, at age 25, my grandmother’s was ripped from her body.

From an outsiders perspective, it seems as though these sterilized women have become those broken women from the paintings. In doing research for this paper, I found very little. The ambiguity is unsettling. Is the near total absence of initial medical documentation a result of apathy towards Native American health, or an intentional coverup? Did the women affected not speak out about this at the time because of the taboo around reproductive systems? Was it shame, or a feeling that no one would listen anyway? I have to wonder, too, how many woman are like my grandmother who only now realizes what was done to her. Whitehorse also did not realize what happened to her until later. “I was trying to have more babies, but was having trouble getting pregnant, so I went to the IHS clinic. That’s when they told me about what they did to me,” She said. She had been sterilized during a previous surgery.“I was in so much pain when I went in for the appendectomy; they gave me a bunch of papers to sign. They never explained anything to me; I had no idea I was giving them permission to sterilize me.” she said. It wasn’t only abdominal pain that allowed doctors to trick women into sterilization. One of the more famous cases of sterilization involved two girls, both under fifteen years old, who were sterilized during surgery to remove their tonsils. It’s been estimated that between 1960 and 1970, for every seven native babies born, one woman was sterilized, culminating in roughly 25% of the potentially fertile female population. Even this was not enough of an attack on the Native American woman. Native American boarding schools, run by the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) where still common in that era. A 1971 census stated that approximately 35,000 Native American children lived in boarding schools rather than at home. In these schools, children were stripped of their language, their culture, their religion, their names, and often, their sanity. Abuse was rampant and the chances of escape were bleak. While non-native children were begging for bell bottoms and watching t.v, two native boys fled, only to freeze to death in their attempt to return home. Suicide rates amongst teenage boarders could reach as high as one hundred times the national average. The rest of the nation, if it noticed, soon turned away and continued to focus on disco. Native mothers could do little to stop the abuse of their children, but a growing number were being offered a choice. If they agreed to be sterilized, their existing children might be allowed to stay with them. It can’t be said if it was in defeat or defiance that a mother made her choice, whichever it was. It would a lie to say that no woman was defeated, and sat slumped over a bottle of whiskey rather than a horse.

However, when my grandmother was wheeled into the recovery bay, she discovered that she was not the only woman who refused stoop down and be silent, though she did not yet know what bond she shared with these women. They were a small group, all in various stages of recovery. They smiled and chatted if and when they could, and because the nurses were about as helpful as a match under water, they tended to each other. The women adjusted each others hospital beds by hand, fetched each other glasses of water and just as importantly, they kept each other in good spirits. Decades later, Janet will still smile and laugh when she remembers a woman that was truly fed up with the barely edible hospital food. “You guys want some pizza?” The woman had asked, and then she got up and climbed out the window. A while later she returned the same way, pizza in hand. They might have been neglected and in pain, but in that moment they were normal women diving into a pizza and giddy with their own mischief. It seems like such a small gesture, valuable in that it’s a light hearted tidbit from an otherwise tragic story, but it is so much more than that. Expand the perspective and you’ll find it’s really the story of how a Native American woman was had her reproductive organs seared into oblivion against her will by white doctors, was neglected by nurses in a recovery room filled with strangers, and this woman still had the strength and spark to climb out a window and return with pizza to share with her sisters. Our solidarity is our fortitude. Native women have an incredible ability to come together and to accomplish incredible things. One of they key elements that allows us to do this is our ability to communicate with each other, and despite what modern white hippies may think, we can’t do that with telepathy and talking animals. I would not have been able to tell my grandmother’s story without calling her and having several lengthy phone calls. This chapter of our history is in danger of being forgotten. It’s imperative we learn as much as we can, but that is not enough. It’s through communication that bond over our people’s losses and triumphs and encourage others to learn along with us. If I am to end this essay with one request, it is that when you read this chapter of our history, please read it out loud.

—- This essay is dedicate to Janet Stork, I cannot give enough thanks to my grandmother for letting me interview her. Rather than mourn her loss, she seemed happy throughout every conversation, as if she was glad that someone wanted to hear what she had to say. This is such a sensitive topic, one that would make many young students here cringe and shy away from, but my grandmother made every conversation a comfortable one. No question was off limits, there was no withholding of details. I feel so lucky to have a grandmother like her, and I’m amazed that it’s through her strength I exist today.

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kalena-henden · 6 years ago

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A sex scene on "Game of Thrones" doesn't normally constitute news. Sex is practically punctuation for the HBO series -- more noticeable in its absence than its presence.

But this week's episode, which saw Arya Stark -- played by 22-year-old Maisie Williams -- do the deed for the first time with her long-time crush Gendry, has invited some extra attention. In the scene, Arya first asks Gendry about his sexual experience (he's had sex with three women), then expresses her desire to have sex. She kisses him, takes his top off, pushes him onto some kind of sack, then orders him to "take your own bloody pants off." It's a powerful and refreshing piece of character development for Arya, but -- judging by the reaction of many viewers -- it also bears the weight of gendered expectations around virginity and sex on-screen, which we would do well to be rid of.

Some found it uncomfortable to see the former child character, who we first met in Season One at age 11, give such a visceral demonstration of her new maturity. Others celebrated seeing Arya assume agency in a show which habitually objectifies young women, uses their bodies as political currency and often deploys sex as a weapon against them. And still others expressed surprise that the keen assassin even wanted to have sex at all -- isn't she satisfied by all that killing she seems to enjoy so much?

Arya, HBO assures us, is now 18. She's spent most of her time in Westeros until now taking brattish, bloody vengeance on her enemies. Were she male, the audience might assume that a virile young warrior would want to kick back and indulge between executions. It shouldn't be surprising that Arya can contain more than one urge in her human body. But as even Williams pointed out in an interview about the episode, much of the value of this scene was in proving her humanity -- "an emotion we've never really seen her engage with." Though she had obviously grown into a young woman before our eyes, her sexual desire wasn't a given. Arya's latest escapade is nevertheless a welcome step in the right direction. Historically, for blockbuster films and TV shows -- including "Game of Thrones" -- straight (and usually white) men losing their virginity has been framed as a heroic high-five with adulthood. For straight women, it's often been a nerve-wracking rite of passage, which regularly sees them submit to male "expertise" during their "first time." "Titanic's" Rose DeWitt Bukater, "Twilight's" Bella Swan, "Gossip Girl's" Blair Waldorf, half the cast of "Cruel Intentions" and so many more millennial role models were shown the way by "worldlier" male counterparts.

Even Daenerys Targaryen's initial discovery of her sexual power -- after losing her virginity through rape in season one of "Game of Thrones" -- is made by way of learning to please the husband who raped her. In getting on top of Gendry, Arya bucked the trend of showing deference to a sexual partner -- and also dispensed with that ton of sexual anxiety we're trained to expect from young women.The sense of jeopardy around the "first time," which for male characters is normally couched in immediate terms of performing well, is often portrayed as more profound for women and girls. The loss of virginity is rarely as simple as "having sex for the first time." Virginity is too often understood in heterosexual terms -- and for people in female bodies, penetrative sex with a man is often seen as the definitive means by which virginity is "lost" and a new womanhood "gained." On-screen, this often comes at a price. In "Juno," the film's 16-year-old namesake gets pregnant the first time she has sex. On TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Buffy's boyfriend Angel loses his soul, and kills several of her friends, after she sleeps with him in Season Two. In the "Twilight" series, Bella's vampire boyfriend Edward makes it clear that there's a high probability he'll get over-excited and eat her if they get too intimate. Sometimes, as is the case for high school senior Lady Bird in the movie of the same name, the cost is the realization that her virginity just wasn't a big deal for her sexual partner.

Examples in which young women express simple curiosity and lust for their own sake are rarer than they should be. Even in an empowering scene where she was in charge, and in an environment brimming with sex, Arya justifies her request for intimacy. "We're probably going to die soon," she tells Gendry. While that heightens the drama and eroticism of the moment, it still frames extreme danger as an excuse to ask the question. It's fair enough -- sex is a solid bucket list item, and legions of men heading off to war have used the same justification to persuade their lovers. But one suspects Arya wanted to know what sex was like irrespective of the circumstances. And it would be more powerful still to see a young woman say she'd like to try sex with someone just because she wants to. Sex on screen is undergoing a gradual evolution. Vulnerability and agency increasingly co-exist, and we are slowly seeing more examples of first-time sex that aren't heteronormative, patriarchal or defined by rape. Generation Z programs like "Sex Education" are taking up the mantle of millennial shows like "Skins," showing more diverse and nuanced takes on sexual exploration for all genders. It's taken time, but old-fashioned sexual cliché is slowly being eroded.

All things considered, it is strange that Arya's first foray into lovemaking on "Game of Thrones" should be so noteworthy. Just a few years ago, her older sister Sansa Stark's brutal rape on her wedding night -- when she was younger than Arya was during her sex scene -- was taken more in the show's stride. But Sansa's experience was apparently more in keeping with the series' tone. But a young woman claiming her sexuality apparently still challenged some viewers who found it difficult to watch an adolescent have sex, in the knowledge that she hadn't always been adolescent. For young female audiences who are too often fed a diet of nerves and submission around first-time sex however, Arya's approach marks a welcome shift toward sexual autonomy. Hopefully, in the near future, examples like hers will no longer be seen as radical acts.

#game of thrones #arya stark #gendrya #arya x gendry #got meta #gendry #gendry waters #got #my post

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uncommonfauna · 5 years ago

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uomo-accattivante · 7 years ago

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A long time ago, a grade-schooler got his hands on a spaceship. He followed the assembly instructions as best he could, snapping on the cannons, the landing gear, the tiny interstellar-chess table. Soon enough, Rian Johnson was holding his very own Millennium Falcon. “The first thing I did,” he recalls, “was throw it across the room, to see how it would look flying.” He grins. “And it broke.”

Johnson grew up, went to film school, made some good stuff, including the entertainingly twisted 2012 sci-fi drama Looper. He’s nearly 44 now, though his cherub cheeks and gentle manner make it easy to picture the kid he was (too easy, maybe – he’s trying to grow back a goatee he shaved); even his neatly pressed short-sleeve button-down has a picture-day feel. In late October, he’s sitting in an office suite inside Disney’s Burbank studios that he’s called home for many months, where a whiteboard declares, “We’re working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in case you forgot).” Johnson is the film’s writer-director, which means he ended up with the world’s finest collection of replacement toys, including a life-size Falcon set that nearly brought him to tears when he stepped onto it. He treated it all with what sounds like an intriguing mix of reverence and mischief – cast members keep saying nothing was quite what they expected. “I shook up the box a little bit,” he says, with that same grin.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everything is broken. In the months since the franchise stirred back to life in 2015’s The Force Awakens, it has felt rather like some incautious child grabbed civilization itself and threw it across the room – and, midflight, many of us realized we were the evil Empire all along, complete with a new ruler that even latter-day George Lucas at his most CGI-addled would reject as too grotesque and implausible a character.

Weirdly, the saga saw it all coming – or maybe it’s not so weird when you consider the Vietnam War commentary embedded in Lucas’ original trilogy, or the warnings about democracy’s fragility in his prequels. In the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, a revanchist movement calling itself the First Order assembles in Triumph of the Will-style marches, showing the shocking strength of an ideology that was supposed to have been thoroughly defeated long ago. What’s left of the government is collapsing and feckless, so the only hope in sight is a band of good guys known as the Resistance. Familiar, this all sounds.

“It’s somewhat a reflection of society,” acknowledges the saga’s new star, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, and who has gone from unknown London actress to full-blown movie star nearly as fast as her character went from desert scavenger to budding Jedi. “But also it is escapism, because there are creatures and there are people running around with fucking lasers and shit. So, I think, a wonderful mix of both.”

And the worse the world gets, the more we need that far-off galaxy, says Gwendoline Christie, who plays stormtrooper honcho Captain Phasma (as well as Game of Thrones’ Brienne of Tarth): “During testing times, there’s nothing wrong with being transported by art. I think we all need it. Many of us are united in our love for this one thing.”

The Last Jedi, due December 15th, is the second episode of the current trilogy, and advance word has suggested that, as in the original middle film, The Empire Strikes Back, things get darker this time. But Johnson pushes back on that, though he does admit some influence from the morally ambiguous 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which is funny, because Lucas considered the Seventies TV show a rip-off and urged a lawsuit – long since settled – against it). “That’s one thing I hope people will be surprised about with the movie,” Johnson says. “I think it’s very funny. The trailers have been kind of dark – the movie has that, but I also made a real conscious effort for it to be a riot. I want it to have all the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, which is not just the Wagner of it. It’s also the Flash Gordon.”

As of late October, almost no one has seen it yet, but Johnson seems eerily free of apprehension about its prospects. He exuded a similar calm on set, according to Adam Driver, who plays Han and Leia’s Darth Vader-worshipping prodigal son, Kylo Ren. “If I had that job, I would be stressed out,” he says. “To pick up where someone left off and carry it forward, but also introduce a vocabulary that hasn’t been seen in a Star Wars movie before, is a tall order and really hard to get right. He’s incredibly smart and doesn’t feel the need to let everyone know it.” (“It felt like we were playing the whole time,” says Kelly Marie Tran, cast as the biggest new character, Rose Tico.) A few weeks after we talk, Lucasfilm announces that Johnson signed on to make three more Star Wars films in the coming decade, the first that step outside of the prevailing Skywalker saga, indicating that Disney and Lucasfilm matriarch Kathleen Kennedy are more than delighted with Last Jedi. And Kennedy’s not easily delighted, having recently replaced the directors of a Han Solo spinoff midshoot and removed original Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow in favor of Abrams’ return.

The Force Awakens’ biggest triumph was the introduction of new characters worth caring about, led by Rey and Kylo Ren, plus the likes of John Boyega’s stormtrooper-defector Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron and more. Kylo Ren (born Ben Solo) lightsaber-shanked Harrison Ford’s Han, depriving Johnson of one coveted action figure – but the film left us with Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, now the general who leads the Resistance, and the climactic reveal of Mark Hamill’s now-grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The Last Jedi will be Fisher’s last Star Wars movie. In the waning days of the cruel year of 2016, she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane, dying four days later. Less than a month afterward, 500,000 or so people assembled in Washington, D.C., for that city’s Women’s March, and Leia was everywhere, in posters bearing her doughnut-haired image circa 1977, with accompanying slogans (“A Woman’s Place Is in the Resistance” was, perhaps, the best).

Johnson had grown close with Fisher, and is glad to hear that I visited her psychedelically decorated Beverly Hills house a couple of years back, where she did almost an entire hilarious interview prone in bed. Afterward, she cheerily cracked jokes about drugs and mental illness in front of a visiting Disney publicist. “You got to experience a little bit of that magical sphere that she created,” says Johnson, who went over the script with her in that same bedroom. “I’m happy I got to poke my head into that, briefly, and know her even a little bit.”

He left her part in the film untouched. “We didn’t end up changing a thing,” says Johnson. “Luckily, we had a totally complete performance from her.” So it is now Abrams who has to figure out how to grapple with Fisher and Leia’s sudden absence. (He is characteristically gnomic on the matter: “It’s a sad reality,” he says. “In terms of going forward … time will tell what ends up getting done.”)

Overall, Johnson enjoyed what seems like an almost unfathomable level of autonomy in shaping The Last Jedi’s story. He says no one dictated a single plot point, that he simply decided what happens next. And he’s baffled by fans who are concerned by the idea that they’re “making it up as we go along”: “The truth is, stories are made up! Whether somebody made this whole thing up 10 years ago and put it on a whiteboard and we all have to stick to that, or whether we’re organically finding it as we move forward, it doesn’t mean that any less thought is being put into it.”

Mark Hamill’s single scene in The Force Awakens lasts all of one minute, and he doesn’t say a thing. But it’s an indelible piece of screen acting with real gravitas, from an underrated performer who had become better known for Broadway and voice-over work – he’s been the definitive animated Joker since the early Nineties. (“With voice-over,” Hamill says, “I thought, ‘This is great! I can let myself go to hell physically! I don’t have to memorize lines!’”) As Rey approaches him on the lonely mountaintop where’s he’s presumably spent years studying the Jedi equivalent of the Talmud, Luke Skywalker’s bearded face cycles through grief, terror and longing.

“I didn’t look at that as ‘Oh, this is going to be my big chance,’” says Hamill, who has just shown up at Johnson’s offices and plopped down next to him, carrying a large thermos of coffee in the right hand that Darth Vader once chopped off. He has a trimmed-down version of his elder-Jedi beard, which he’s grown to appreciate: “I shaved, and I thought, ‘You know what, the beard does cover up the jowl.’”

Hamill is a charming, jittery chatterbox – turns out that even at his youngest and prettiest, he was a geek trapped in the body of a golden boy. He is excitable and wild-eyed enough to give the vague sense that, like Luke, he actually might have spent a few solitary years on a distant planet, and is still readjusting to Earth life, or at least movie stardom.

He admits to having had “frustrations over being over-associated” with Star Wars over the years – his Skywalking cost him a chance at even auditioning to reprise his stage role as Mozart in the film of Amadeus – “but nothing that caused me any deep anguish.” He still spent the decades since Return of the Jedi acting and raising a family with Marilou, his wife of 39 years. And as for his current return to the role of Luke? “It’s a culmination of my career,” he says. “If I focused on how enormous it really is, I don’t think I could function. I told Rian that. I said, as absurd as it sounds, ‘I’m going to have to pretend this is an art-house film that no one is going to see.’ ”

For his Force Awakens scene, he says, “I didn’t know – and I don’t think J.J. really knew – specifically what had happened in those 30 years. Honestly, what I did was try and give J.J. a range of options. Neutral, suspicion, doubt … taking advantage of the fact that it’s all thoughts. I love watching silent films. Think of how effective they could be without dialogue.”

Abrams had some trepidation over the idea of handing Hamill a script with such a tiny role. “The last thing I wanted to do was insult a childhood hero,” he says, “but I also knew it was potentially one of the great drumrolls of all time.” In fact, Hamill’s first reaction was, “What a rip-off, I don’t get to run around the Death Star bumping heads with Carrie and Harrison anymore!”

But he came to agree with Abrams, especially after he counted the number of times Luke was mentioned in the screenplay – he thinks it was more than 50: “I don’t want to say, ‘That’s the greatest entrance in cinematic history’ … but certainly the greatest entrance of my career.”

Johnson turns to Hamill. “Did I ever tell you that early on when I was trying to figure out the story for this,” he says, “I had a brief idea I was chasing where I was like, ‘What if Luke is blind? What if he’s, like, the blind samurai?’ But we didn’t do it. You’re welcome. Didn’t stick.” (He adds that this was before a blind Force-using character showed up in 2016’s side film Rogue One.)

Hamill laughs, briefly contemplating how tough that twist would’ve been: “Luke, not too close to the cliff!”

He had a hard enough time with the storyline Johnson actually created for Luke, who is now what the actor calls a “disillusioned” Jedi. “This is not a joyful story to tell,” Hamill says, “my portion of it.” Johnson confirms that Hamill flat-out told him at the start that he disagreed with the direction Luke’s character was taking. “We then started a conversation,” says Johnson. “We went back and forth, and after having to explain my version, I adjusted it. And I had to justify it to myself, and that ended up being incredibly useful. I felt very close to Mark by the end. Those early days of butting heads and then coming together, that process always brings you closer.”

Hamill pushed himself to imagine how Luke could’ve gotten to his place of alienation. A rock fan who’s buddies with the Kinks’ Dave Davies, Hamill started thinking about shattered hippie dreams as he watched a Beatles documentary. “I was hearing Ringo talk about ‘Well, in those days, it was peace and love.’ And how it was a movement that largely didn’t work. I thought about that. Back in the day, I thought, by the time we get into power, there will be no more wars. Pot will be legal.” He smiles at that part. “I believed all that. I had to use that feeling of failure to relate to it.” (We do already know that Luke was training a bunch of Jedi, and Kylo Ren turned on him.)

Hamill’s grief over the loss of Fisher is still fresh, especially since the two of them got to renew their bond, and their space-sibling squabbling, after fallow decades that had given them far fewer reasons to get together. “There was now a comfort level that she had with me,” he says, “that I wasn’t out to get anything or trying to hustle her in any way. I was the same person that I was when she knew me. … I was sort of the square, stick-in-the-mud brother, and she was the wild, madcap Auntie Mame.” Promoting the movie is bringing it all back for him. “I just can’t stand it,” he says. “She’s wonderful in the movie. But it adds a layer of melancholy we don’t deserve. I’d love the emotions to come from the story, not from real life.”

I mention how hard Luke seems to have had it: never meeting his mom; finding the burnt corpses of the aunt and uncle who raised him; those well-known daddy issues; the later years of isolation. “It’s the life of a hero, man,” says Johnson. “That’s what you’ve gotta do to be a hero. You’ve gotta watch people that you love burn to death!”

Hamill notes that reality is not so great either. “Sometimes,” he says, softer than usual, “you think, ‘I’d rather have Luke’s life than mine.’”

Adam Driver has a question for me. “What,” he asks, “is emo?”

Between training for the Marines and training at Juilliard to become one of his generation’s most extraordinary actors, Driver missed some stuff, including entire music genres. But the rest of the world (including an amusing parody Twitter account) decided there’s something distinctly emo about his character, with his luxuriant hair, black outfits and periodic temper tantrums. “You have someone who’s being told that he’s special his whole life,” Driver says of his character, “and he can feel it. And he feels everything probably more intensely than the people around him, you know?”

As anyone who’s seen Driver in practically anything, even Girls, could tell you, the actor himself seems to feel things more strongly than most. “I don’t think of myself as a particularly intense person,” he says, possibly not unaware that he is making intense eye contact, and that his right knee is bouncing up and down with excess energy. “I get obsessive about certain things and, like, enjoy the process of working on something.” He’s in a Brooklyn cafe, on a tree-lined street, that seems to be his go-to spot for interviews. He arrived early, fresh from shooting the new Spike Lee movie, wearing a dark-blue sweater over black jeans and high-top Adidas. Driver has a certainty to him, a steel core, that’s a little intimidating, despite his obvious affability and big, near-constant laugh. It’s not unlike talking to Harrison Ford, who played his dad. Until Driver’s character murdered him.

Driver, raised by his mom and preacher stepdad after his parents divorced when he was seven, doesn’t flinch when I suggest his own father issues might be at work. “I don’t know that it’s always that literal,” he says. He mentions that Kylo Ren also murders Max Van Sydow’s character, who was sort of a “distant uncle” to him. “No one asks me, ‘So you have a distant-uncle problem?’ ”

John Boyega told me in 2015 that Driver stayed in character on set, but that seems to be not quite true. Driver just tries to keep focused on his character’s emotions in the face of an environment he can’t help but find ridiculous. “Watching Star Wars, it’s an action-adventure,” he says. “But shooting it, it’s a straight comedy. Stormtroopers trying to find a bathroom. People dressed as trolls, like, running into doorways. It’s hilarious.” And when he wears his helmet, he can’t see very well. “You’re supposed to be very stealth, and a tree root takes you down.”

He refuses to see his character as bratty. “There is a little bit of an elitist, royalty thing going on,” he says, reminding us that the character’s estranged mom is “the princess. I think he’s aware of maybe the privilege.” He does acknowledge playing Kylo Ren younger than his own age of 34: “I don’t want to say how much younger, 'cause people will read into it… .” He flushes, and later says he regrets mentioning it at all. If it’s a plot spoiler, it’s unclear exactly how, unless it’s related to his unexplained connection to Rey. The two apparently spend serious time together in this film. “The relationship between Kylo and Rey is awesome,” says Ridley, whom Driver calls a “great scene partner,” apparently one of his highest compliments.

At first, Driver wasn’t totally sure he wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. I’m always skeptical of Hollywood movies because they’re mostly just too broad,“ he says. But Abrams’ pitch, emphasizing the uniqueness of Kylo Ren’s character as a conflicted villain, made the sale. “Everything about him from the outside is designed to project the image that he’s assured,” he says. Only in private can he acknowledge “how un-figured-out he is … how weak.”

Driver can make a passionate case for why Kylo Ren isn’t actually a villain at all.

“It’s not like people weren’t living on the Death Star,” he says, his brown eyes shifting from puppyish to fierce without warning. He seems almost in character now. “Isn’t that also an act of terrorism against the hundreds of thousands of people who died there? Did they not have families? I see how people can point to examples that make themselves feel they’re right. And when you feel in your bones that you’re supported by a higher power on top of that, and you’re morally right, there’s no limit to what you’ll do to make sure that you win. Both sides feel this way.”

You’re starting to talk me into joining the Empire, I say. He laughs and shifts his delivery one degree over the top. “So, the rebels are bad,” he says, connecting his fist with the table. “I strongly believe this!”

On an extravagantly rainy Thursday evening in Montreal, I’m sitting at crowded, noisy Le Vin Papillon, a wine bar ranked as Canada’s fourth-best restaurant, holding a seat for a Jedi. Ridley arrives right on time, in a fuzzy faux-fur coat and a jumper dress – “the dregs of my wardrobe,” she says. Her shortish hair is in a Rey-ish topknot that makes her way too recognizable, but she doesn’t care. “This is how I have always had my hair,” says Ridley. “I am not going to change it.” She’s been in Montreal for three months, shooting a Doug Liman-directed sci-fi movie called Chaos Walking – which “is a little bit chaotic, in that we’re writing as we go and everything,” she says. “I’ve realized I don’t work well with that.”

She’s on the second of two unexpected days off thanks to co-star Tom Holland (a.k.a the latest Spider-Man) suffering an impacted wisdom tooth, but she’s still deeply exhausted.

“I need a [vitamin] B shot in my ass,” she muses, in the kind of upscale British accent that makes curses sound elegant. It seems already clear that typecasting won’t pose the kind of problem for her that it did for the likes of Hamill and Fisher. Instead, she’s just busy in a way that only a freshly minted 25-year-old movie star could be – and she still managed to fulfill a pre-fame plan to go back to college for a semester last year. “I have no control in my life at all,” she says. She has four movies on the way, not even counting the Liman one. “So there is a lot going on, and I have never had to deal with that before. I don’t think my brain can really keep up with what is going on.” She has full-blown night terrors: “I wake up and scream.”

Rey had an epochal moment in the last movie, claiming her lightsaber from the snowy ground, and with it, her power, her destiny, her place at the center of the narrative. Her turn. Ridley is still absorbing what that moment, and that character, mean to women and little girls. But she definitely felt more pressure this time around, especially because last time, “it was all so insane, it felt like a dream,” she says. “I remember saying to Rian, 'I am so fucking neurotic on this one.’ I was like, 'I am going to fuck this up. All these people think this thing. How do I do that thing?’ ”

Part of the problem may have been Ridley’s tendency to downplay what she pulled off in the first movie. Her heart-tugging solo scenes in the first act, especially the moment where she eats her sad little “one half portion” of green space bread, created enormous goodwill, in seconds, for a character no one had seen before. She mentions Harrison Ford’s effusive praise for that eating scene, to the point where he was “getting emotional.” “I don’t know,” she says with a shrug, ultimately giving credit for the impact to Abrams and the movie’s cinematographer, Dan Mindel. “I was just eating!”

But in other ways, Rey has given her confidence. On her current film, she says, she was offered a stunt double for a scene where a door would swing open and knock her back. She took Liman aside and said, “'Doug, I don’t need a stunt double to do that.’ And I thought, 'I don’t know if this would’ve happened if it was Tom Holland.’”

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey’s parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: “I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is.” Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. “I wasn’t given any directive as to what that had to be,” he says. “I was never given the information that she is this or she is that.”

The idea that Johnson and Abrams somehow landed on the same answer does seem to suggest that Rey’s parents aren’t some random, never-before-seen characters. All that said, Abrams cryptically hints there may have been more coordination between him and Johnson than the latter director has let on, so who knows what’s going on here – they may be messing with us to preserve one of Abrams’ precious mystery boxes. In any case, Ridley loves the speculation: Her favorite fan theories involve immaculate conception and time travel. It seems more likely that she’s either Luke’s daughter or his niece, but again, who knows.

Back in 2015, Ridley told me she was fine with the idea of being seen as Rey forever, the way Fisher was always Leia. Now she’s changed her mind. “There are literally no similarities with Carrie’s story and mine,” she says, adding that while Fisher ultimately embraced writing over acting, she plans on continuing to “inhabit” as many characters as possible. On the other hand, “a lot of Rey is me,” she says, “but that is not me being Rey. That is parts of me being a character as Rey, because how could it not? So in that sense, I understand it, because so much of Leia is Carrie.”

This trilogy will end with Abrams’ Last Jedi sequel, and after that, it sounds like the main thrust of the franchise will move into Johnson’s mysterious new movies, which look to be unconnected to the previous saga. As far as Abrams is concerned, that will be the end of the Skywalker story. “I do see it that way,” he says. “But the future is in flux.”

As far as Ridley is concerned, the future of Rey is pretty much set. She doesn’t want to play the character after the next movie. “No,” she says flatly. “For me, I didn’t really know what I was signing on to. I hadn’t read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, 'Awesome.’ Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now.”

But, um, doesn’t that sort of sound like a yes? “No,” she says again, smiling a little. “No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it’s three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out.”

And how about coming back in 30 years, as her predecessors did? She considers this soberly, between bites of Brussels sprouts roasted on the stalk. (We split the dish, which means she got … one half portion.) “Who knows? I honestly feel like the world may end in the next 30 years, so, if in 30 years we are not living underground in a series of interconnected cells … then sure. Maybe. But again, it’s like, who knows. Because the thing I thought was so amazing, was people really wanted it. And it was done by people who really love it.”

She thinks even harder about it, this new Star Wars trilogy that we’ve made up on the spot. “How old will I be?” she asks, before doing the math. “55.” She looks very young for a moment, as she tries to picture herself as a middle-aged Jedi. Then she gives up. It’s time to go, anyway; she has a 5:25 a.m. pickup tomorrow for her new movie. “Fuck,” Ridley says. “I can’t think that far ahead.”

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#oscar isaac #poe dameron #star wars #the last jedi #rolling stone #rian johnson #mark hamill #luke skywalker #adam driver #kylo ren #daisy ridley #rey #john boyega #finn #carrie fisher #general leia #jj abrams

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son-of-alderaan · 7 years ago

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Jedi Confidential: Inside the Dark New 'Star Wars' Movie

The cast and director of 'The Last Jedi' on the story's secrets, a disaffected Skywalker and a death in the family

A long time ago, a grade-schooler got his hands on a spaceship. He followed the assembly instructions as best he could, snapping on the cannons, the landing gear, the tiny interstellar-chess table. Soon enough, Rian Johnson was holding his very own Millennium Falcon. "The first thing I did," he recalls, "was throw it across the room, to see how it would look flying." He grins. "And it broke."

Johnson grew up, went to film school, made some good stuff, including the entertainingly twisted 2012 sci-fi drama Looper. He's nearly 44 now, though his cherub cheeks and gentle manner make it easy to picture the kid he was (too easy, maybe – he's trying to grow back a goatee he shaved); even his neatly pressed short-sleeve button-down has a picture-day feel. In late October, he's sitting in an office suite inside Disney's Burbank studios that he's called home for many months, where a whiteboard declares, "We're working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in case you forgot)." Johnson is the film's writer-director, which means he ended up with the world's finest collection of replacement toys, including a life-size Falcon set that nearly brought him to tears when he stepped onto it. He treated it all with what sounds like an intriguing mix of reverence and mischief – cast members keep saying nothing was quite what they expected. "I shook up the box a little bit," he says, with that same grin.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everything is broken. In the months since the franchise stirred back to life in 2015's The Force Awakens, it has felt rather like some incautious child grabbed civilization itself and threw it across the room – and, midflight, many of us realized we were the evil Empire all along, complete with a new ruler that even latter-day George Lucas at his most CGI-addled would reject as too grotesque and implausible a character. Weirdly, the saga saw it all coming – or maybe it's not so weird when you consider the Vietnam War commentary embedded in Lucas' original trilogy, or the warnings about democracy's fragility in his prequels. In the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, a revanchist movement calling itself the First Order assembles in Triumph of the Will-style marches, showing the shocking strength of an ideology that was supposed to have been thoroughly defeated long ago. What's left of the government is collapsing and feckless, so the only hope in sight is a band of good guys known as the Resistance. Familiar, this all sounds.

"It's somewhat a reflection of society," acknowledges the saga's new star, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, and who has gone from unknown London actress to full-blown movie star nearly as fast as her character went from desert scavenger to budding Jedi. "But also it is escapism, because there are creatures and there are people running around with fucking lasers and shit. So, I think, a wonderful mix of both."

And the worse the world gets, the more we need that far-off galaxy, says Gwendoline Christie, who plays stormtrooper honcho Captain Phasma (as well as Game of Thrones' Brienne of Tarth): "During testing times, there's nothing wrong with being transported by art. I think we all need it. Many of us are united in our love for this one thing." The Last Jedi, due December 15th, is the second episode of the current trilogy, and advance word has suggested that, as in the original middle film, The Empire Strikes Back, things get darker this time. But Johnson pushes back on that, though he does admit some influence from the morally ambiguous 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which is funny, because Lucas considered the Seventies TV show a rip-off and urged a lawsuit – long since settled – against it). "That's one thing I hope people will be surprised about with the movie," Johnson says. "I think it's very funny. The trailers have been kind of dark – the movie has that, but I also made a real conscious effort for it to be a riot. I want it to have all the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, which is not just the Wagner of it. It's also the Flash Gordon."

As of late October, almost no one has seen it yet, but Johnson seems eerily free of apprehension about its prospects. He exuded a similar calm on set, according to Adam Driver, who plays Han and Leia's Darth Vader-worshipping prodigal son, Kylo Ren. "If I had that job, I would be stressed out," he says. "To pick up where someone left off and carry it forward, but also introduce a vocabulary that hasn't been seen in a Star Wars movie before, is a tall order and really hard to get right. He's incredibly smart and doesn't feel the need to let everyone know it." ("It felt like we were playing the whole time," says Kelly Marie Tran, cast as the biggest new character, Rose Tico.) A few weeks after we talk, Lucasfilm announces that Johnson signed on to make three more Star Warsfilms in the coming decade, the first that step outside of the prevailing Skywalker saga, indicating that Disney and Lucasfilm matriarch Kathleen Kennedy are more than delighted with Last Jedi. And Kennedy's not easily delighted, having recently replaced the directors of a Han Solo spinoff midshoot and removed original Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow in favor of Abrams' return.

The Force Awakens' biggest triumph was the introduction of new characters worth caring about, led by Rey and Kylo Ren, plus the likes of John Boyega's stormtrooper-defector Finn, Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron and more. Kylo Ren (born Ben Solo) lightsaber-shanked Harrison Ford's Han, depriving Johnson of one coveted action figure – but the film left us with Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia, now the general who leads the Resistance, and the climactic reveal of Mark Hamill's now-grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The Last Jedi will be Fisher's last Star Wars movie. In the waning days of the cruel year of 2016, she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane, dying four days later. Less than a month afterward, 500,000 or so people assembled in Washington, D.C., for that city's Women's March, and Leia was everywhere, in posters bearing her doughnut-haired image circa 1977, with accompanying slogans ("A Woman's Place Is in the Resistance" was, perhaps, the best).

Johnson had grown close with Fisher, and is glad to hear that I visited her psychedelically decorated Beverly Hills house a couple of years back, where she did almost an entire hilarious interview prone in bed. Afterward, she cheerily cracked jokes about drugs and mental illness in front of a visiting Disney publicist. "You got to experience a little bit of that magical sphere that she created," says Johnson, who went over the script with her in that same bedroom. "I'm happy I got to poke my head into that, briefly, and know her even a little bit."

He left her part in the film untouched. "We didn't end up changing a thing," says Johnson. "Luckily, we had a totally complete performance from her." So it is now Abrams who has to figure out how to grapple with Fisher and Leia's sudden absence. (He is characteristically gnomic on the matter: "It's a sad reality," he says. "In terms of going forward ... time will tell what ends up getting done.")

Overall, Johnson enjoyed what seems like an almost unfathomable level of autonomy in shaping The Last Jedi's story. He says no one dictated a single plot point, that he simply decided what happens next. And he's baffled by fans who are concerned by the idea that they're "making it up as we go along": "The truth is, stories are made up! Whether somebody made this whole thing up 10 years ago and put it on a whiteboard and we all have to stick to that, or whether we're organically finding it as we move forward, it doesn't mean that any less thought is being put into it."

Mark Hamill's single scene in The Force Awakens lasts all of one minute, and he doesn't say a thing. But it's an indelible piece of screen acting with real gravitas, from an underrated performer who had become better known for Broadway and voice-over work – he's been the definitive animated Joker since the early Nineties. ("With voice-over," Hamill says, "I thought, 'This is great! I can let myself go to hell physically! I don't have to memorize lines!'") As Rey approaches him on the lonely mountaintop where's he's presumably spent years studying the Jedi equivalent of the Talmud, Luke Skywalker's bearded face cycles through grief, terror and longing.

"I didn't look at that as 'Oh, this is going to be my big chance,'" says Hamill, who has just shown up at Johnson's offices and plopped down next to him, carrying a large thermos of coffee in the right hand that Darth Vader once chopped off. He has a trimmed-down version of his elder-Jedi beard, which he's grown to appreciate: "I shaved, and I thought, 'You know what, the beard does cover up the jowl.'"

He admits to having had "frustrations over being over-associated" with Star Wars over the years – his Skywalking cost him a chance at even auditioning to reprise his stage role as Mozart in the film of Amadeus – "but nothing that caused me any deep anguish." He still spent the decades since Return of the Jediacting and raising a family with Marilou, his wife of 39 years. And as for his current return to the role of Luke? "It's a culmination of my career," he says. "If I focused on how enormous it really is, I don't think I could function. I told Rian that. I said, as absurd as it sounds, 'I'm going to have to pretend this is an art-house film that no one is going to see.' "

For his Force Awakens scene, he says, "I didn't know – and I don't think J.J. really knew – specifically what had happened in those 30 years. Honestly, what I did was try and give J.J. a range of options. Neutral, suspicion, doubt … taking advantage of the fact that it's all thoughts. I love watching silent films. Think of how effective they could be without dialogue."

Abrams had some trepidation over the idea of handing Hamill a script with such a tiny role. "The last thing I wanted to do was insult a childhood hero," he says, "but I also knew it was potentially one of the great drumrolls of all time." In fact, Hamill's first reaction was, "What a rip-off, I don't get to run around the Death Star bumping heads with Carrie and Harrison anymore!"

But he came to agree with Abrams, especially after he counted the number of times Luke was mentioned in the screenplay – he thinks it was more than 50: "I don't want to say, 'That's the greatest entrance in cinematic history' . . . but certainly the greatest entrance of my career."

Johnson turns to Hamill. "Did I ever tell you that early on when I was trying to figure out the story for this," he says, "I had a brief idea I was chasing where I was like, 'What if Luke is blind? What if he's, like, the blind samurai?' But we didn't do it. You're welcome. Didn't stick." (He adds that this was before a blind Force-using character showed up in 2016's side film Rogue One.)

Hamill laughs, briefly contemplating how tough that twist would've been: "Luke, not too close to the cliff!" He had a hard enough time with the storyline Johnson actually created for Luke, who is now what the actor calls a "disillusioned" Jedi. "This is not a joyful story to tell," Hamill says, "my portion of it." Johnson confirms that Hamill flat-out told him at the start that he disagreed with the direction Luke's character was taking. "We then started a conversation," says Johnson. "We went back and forth, and after having to explain my version, I adjusted it. And I had to justify it to myself, and that ended up being incredibly useful. I felt very close to Mark by the end. Those early days of butting heads and then coming together, that process always brings you closer."

Hamill pushed himself to imagine how Luke could've gotten to his place of alienation. A rock fan who's buddies with the Kinks' Dave Davies, Hamill started thinking about shattered hippie dreams as he watched a Beatles documentary. "I was hearing Ringo talk about 'Well, in those days, it was peace and love.' And how it was a movement that largely didn't work. I thought about that. Back in the day, I thought, by the time we get into power, there will be no more wars. Pot will be legal." He smiles at that part. "I believed all that. I had to use that feeling of failure to relate to it." (We do already know that Luke was training a bunch of Jedi, and Kylo Ren turned on him.) Hamill's grief over the loss of Fisher is still fresh, especially since the two of them got to renew their bond, and their space-sibling squabbling, after fallow decades that had given them far fewer reasons to get together. "There was now a comfort level that she had with me," he says, "that I wasn't out to get anything or trying to hustle her in any way. I was the same person that I was when she knew me. ... I was sort of the square, stick-in-the-mud brother, and she was the wild, madcap Auntie Mame." Promoting the movie is bringing it all back for him. "I just can't stand it," he says. "She's wonderful in the movie. But it adds a layer of melancholy we don't deserve. I'd love the emotions to come from the story, not from real life."

I mention how hard Luke seems to have had it: never meeting his mom; finding the burnt corpses of the aunt and uncle who raised him; those well-known daddy issues; the later years of isolation. "It's the life of a hero, man," says Johnson. "That's what you've gotta do to be a hero. You've gotta watch people that you love burn to death!" Hamill notes that reality is not so great either. "Sometimes," he says, softer than usual, "you think, 'I'd rather have Luke's life than mine.'"

Adam Driver has a question for me. "What," he asks, "is emo?" Between training for the Marines and training at Juilliard to become one of his generation's most extraordinary actors, Driver missed some stuff, including entire music genres. But the rest of the world (including an amusing parody Twitter account) decided there's something distinctly emo about his character, with his luxuriant hair, black outfits and periodic temper tantrums. "You have someone who's being told that he's special his whole life," Driver says of his character, "and he can feel it. And he feels everything probably more intensely than the people around him, you know?"

As anyone who's seen Driver in practically anything, even Girls, could tell you, the actor himself seems to feel things more strongly than most. "I don't think of myself as a particularly intense person," he says, possibly not unaware that he is making intense eye contact, and that his right knee is bouncing up and down with excess energy. "I get obsessive about certain things and, like, enjoy the process of working on something." He's in a Brooklyn cafe, on a tree-lined street, that seems to be his go-to spot for interviews. He arrived early, fresh from shooting the new Spike Lee movie, wearing a dark-blue sweater over black jeans and high-top Adidas. Driver has a certainty to him, a steel core, that's a little intimidating, despite his obvious affability and big, near-constant laugh. It's not unlike talking to Harrison Ford, who played his dad. Until Driver's character murdered him.

Driver, raised by his mom and preacher stepdad after his parents divorced when he was seven, doesn't flinch when I suggest his own father issues might be at work. "I don't know that it's always that literal," he says. He mentions that Kylo Ren also murders Max Van Sydow's character, who was sort of a "distant uncle" to him. "No one asks me, 'So you have a distant-uncle problem?' "

John Boyega told me in 2015 that Driver stayed in character on set, but that seems to be not quite true. Driver just tries to keep focused on his character's emotions in the face of an environment he can't help but find ridiculous. "Watching Star Wars, it's an action-adventure," he says. "But shooting it, it's a straight comedy. Stormtroopers trying to find a bathroom. People dressed as trolls, like, running into doorways. It's hilarious." And when he wears his helmet, he can't see very well. "You're supposed to be very stealth, and a tree root takes you down."

He refuses to see his character as bratty. "There is a little bit of an elitist, royalty thing going on," he says, reminding us that the character's estranged mom is "the princess. I think he's aware of maybe the privilege." He does acknowledge playing Kylo Ren younger than his own age of 34: "I don't want to say how much younger, 'cause people will read into it. . . ." He flushes, and later says he regrets mentioning it at all. If it's a plot spoiler, it's unclear exactly how, unless it's related to his unexplained connection to Rey. The two apparently spend serious time together in this film. "The relationship between Kylo and Rey is awesome," says Ridley, whom Driver calls a "great scene partner," apparently one of his highest compliments.

At first, Driver wasn't totally sure he wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. I'm always skeptical of Hollywood movies because they're mostly just too broad," he says. But Abrams' pitch, emphasizing the uniqueness of Kylo Ren's character as a conflicted villain, made the sale. "Everything about him from the outside is designed to project the image that he's assured," he says. Only in private can he acknowledge "how un-figured-out he is … how weak."

Driver can make a passionate case for why Kylo Ren isn't actually a villain at all.

"It's not like people weren't living on the Death Star," he says, his brown eyes shifting from puppyish to fierce without warning. He seems almost in character now. "Isn't that also an act of terrorism against the hundreds of thousands of people who died there? Did they not have families? I see how people can point to examples that make themselves feel they're right. And when you feel in your bones that you're supported by a higher power on top of that, and you're morally right, there's no limit to what you'll do to make sure that you win. Both sides feel this way."

You're starting to talk me into joining the Empire, I say. He laughs and shifts his delivery one degree over the top. "So, the rebels are bad," he says, connecting his fist with the table. "I strongly believe this!"

On an extravagantly rainy Thursday evening in Montreal, I'm sitting at crowded, noisy Le Vin Papillon, a wine bar ranked as Canada's fourth-best restaurant, holding a seat for a Jedi. Ridley arrives right on time, in a fuzzy faux-fur coat and a jumper dress – "the dregs of my wardrobe," she says. Her shortish hair is in a Rey-ish topknot that makes her way too recognizable, but she doesn't care. "This is how I have always had my hair," says Ridley. "I am not going to change it." She's been in Montreal for three months, shooting a Doug Liman-directed sci-fi movie called Chaos Walking – which "is a little bit chaotic, in that we're writing as we go and everything," she says. "I've realized I don't work well with that."

She's on the second of two unexpected days off thanks to co-star Tom Holland (a.k.a the latest Spider-Man) suffering an impacted wisdom tooth, but she's still deeply exhausted. "I need a [vitamin] B shot in my ass," she muses, in the kind of upscale British accent that makes curses sound elegant. It seems already clear that typecasting won't pose the kind of problem for her that it did for the likes of Hamill and Fisher. Instead, she's just busy in a way that only a freshly minted 25-year-old movie star could be – and she still managed to fulfill a pre-fame plan to go back to college for a semester last year. "I have no control in my life at all," she says. She has four movies on the way, not even counting the Liman one. "So there is a lot going on, and I have never had to deal with that before. I don't think my brain can really keep up with what is going on." She has full-blown night terrors: "I wake up and scream."

Rey had an epochal moment in the last movie, claiming her lightsaber from the snowy ground, and with it, her power, her destiny, her place at the center of the narrative. Her turn. Ridley is still absorbing what that moment, and that character, mean to women and little girls. But she definitely felt more pressure this time around, especially because last time, "it was all so insane, it felt like a dream," she says. "I remember saying to Rian, 'I am so fucking neurotic on this one.' I was like, 'I am going to fuck this up. All these people think this thing. How do I do that thing?' "

Part of the problem may have been Ridley's tendency to downplay what she pulled off in the first movie. Her heart-tugging solo scenes in the first act, especially the moment where she eats her sad little "one half portion" of green space bread, created enormous goodwill, in seconds, for a character no one had seen before. She mentions Harrison Ford's effusive praise for that eating scene, to the point where he was "getting emotional." "I don't know," she says with a shrug, ultimately giving credit for the impact to Abrams and the movie's cinematographer, Dan Mindel. "I was just eating!"

But in other ways, Rey has given her confidence. On her current film, she says, she was offered a stunt double for a scene where a door would swing open and knock her back. She took Liman aside and said, "'Doug, I don't need a stunt double to do that.' And I thought, 'I don't know if this would've happened if it was Tom Holland.'"

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey's parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: "I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is." Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. "I wasn't given any directive as to what that had to be," he says. "I was never given the information that she is this or she is that."

The idea that Johnson and Abrams somehow landed on the same answer does seem to suggest that Rey's parents aren't some random, never-before-seen characters. All that said, Abrams cryptically hints there may have been more coordination between him and Johnson than the latter director has let on, so who knows what's going on here – they may be messing with us to preserve one of Abrams' precious mystery boxes. In any case, Ridley loves the speculation: Her favorite fan theories involve immaculate conception and time travel. It seems more likely that she's either Luke's daughter or his niece, but again, who knows.

Back in 2015, Ridley told me she was fine with the idea of being seen as Rey forever, the way Fisher was always Leia. Now she's changed her mind. "There are literally no similarities with Carrie's story and mine," she says, adding that while Fisher ultimately embraced writing over acting, she plans on continuing to "inhabit" as many characters as possible. On the other hand, "a lot of Rey is me," she says, "but that is not me being Rey. That is parts of me being a character as Rey, because how could it not? So in that sense, I understand it, because so much of Leia is Carrie."

This trilogy will end with Abrams' Last Jedi sequel, and after that, it sounds like the main thrust of the franchise will move into Johnson's mysterious new movies, which look to be unconnected to the previous saga. As far as Abrams is concerned, that will be the end of the Skywalker story. "I do see it that way," he says. "But the future is in flux."

As far as Ridley is concerned, the future of Rey is pretty much set. She doesn't want to play the character after the next movie. "No," she says flatly. "For me, I didn't really know what I was signing on to. I hadn't read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, 'Awesome.' Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now."

But, um, doesn't that sort of sound like a yes? "No," she says again, smiling a little. "No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it's three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out." And how about coming back in 30 years, as her predecessors did? She considers this soberly, between bites of Brussels sprouts roasted on the stalk. (We split the dish, which means she got ... one half portion.) "Who knows? I honestly feel like the world may end in the next 30 years, so, if in 30 years we are not living underground in a series of interconnected cells ... then sure. Maybe. But again, it's like, who knows. Because the thing I thought was so amazing, was people really wanted it. And it was done by people who really love it." She thinks even harder about it, this new Star Wars trilogy that we've made up on the spot. "How old will I be?" she asks, before doing the math. "55." She looks very young for a moment, as she tries to picture herself as a middle-aged Jedi. Then she gives up. It's time to go, anyway; she has a 5:25 a.m. pickup tomorrow for her new movie. "Fuck," Ridley says. "I can't think that far ahead." (x)

#rian johnson #mark hamill #adam driver #daisy ridley #star wars tlj #interview #rolling stone magazine #long post

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jeanjauthor · 4 years ago

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Gonna post the pics here and explain which ones I’d knock outta the running. My reasons are ONLY my own opinion, and I admit in advance that others have their right to their own opinions as well, and that whatever I say about what I like & dislike, all of these categories are still valid for those who actually do like them...even if some of them I am just utterly sick of by now, or have what I think are genuine reasons to want those categories gone.

Anyway, caveats over, on with the fun...which I will put behind a cut to save everyone’s dashboards!

Trapped Together. Only One Bed. Marriage Of Convenience. Fake Relationship.

...Of course they start this off with the hardest one to choose to get rid of, because I love all of these. I think, however...that “Only One Bed” and “Trapped Together” are pretty darn close. Marriage of Convenience is not the same thing as Fake Relationship--it’s an actual relationship with an actual committment at some level on both sides--so those both have to stay.

Only One Bed, that one presumes they actually like each other at least enough to travel together, so that’s a bonus, but Trapped Together doesn’t guarantee even a smidge of that; they’re forced together...

Damn this is hard. I really like the “oh no, only one bed, and we’ll have to share it!” trope...but Trapped Together could include that...plus it has more plot possibilities.

So I’m going to vote out Only One Bed, even though it goes against my plotline principles normally.

The next one is this:

Tortured/Scarred. Cinnamon Roll. Alpha. Playboy/Rake.

Tortured/Scarred needs more love, because there are a lot of people in the world who are indeed tormented & injured / unlovely / disabled. I do wish the disability aspect would stop being used as inspiration pr0n but people are getting better about that, at least.

Cinnamon Roll is a keeper, too. Truly good, or rather, Good™, characters need to be celebrated, protected, and promoted as an ideal role model...provided there’s someone in their lie who can and does keep an eye out (cynical eye) for Bad Things And Bad People™, because perpetual innocence is ridiculously unreal...but it’s 100% valid to have a hopeful heart and a kind nature.

As for Alpha and Playboy/Rake...I’m sick of both. And it’s difficult as to which one to toss out, because they both have their downsides. “Alpha Males” tend to be bullies and abusers and manipulative self-centered assholes. I’ve read far too many of those stories where they literally kidnap women and refuse to return them to their homes / families / homeworlds (scifi or fantasy), etc. But on the other hand, Playboys & Rakes perpetuate the “rich = right” and “money means you can grab them by the p***y, they just let you do it” mentality.

Right now, I am far too angry at T & Co, and the oligarchs keeping them in power. And I am also reminded that Nalini Singh (we have the same editor, squee!) has a FANTASTIC universe, the psy-changeling universe, where Alphas are actually kind, caring, loving, protective, and NOT bullies toward their own people, including their own mates. (Usually, but the few that were a bit bullying learned better!)

So I’m going to ditch the Playboy/Rake mindset, because we need to stop thinking the rich can get away with anything. I mean, have you SEEN 2020??

*ahem* Next...

Turgid. Moist. Thrust. Plunge.

Part of me really dislikes moist (though not Moist, the character from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) as a word...but on the other hand, lubrication is always a good thing to have. Turgid is a bit old-fashioned, but at the same time it is an accurate word. Thrust is a bit, well, stabby. Plunge makes me think of swimming pools, not lovemaking. (Or possibly stopped up toilets, ugh.)

Mkay, this is another difficult one, but...I think...rrrgh, had to change my mind. I think I’ll do away with moist, so long as “lubrication = a very good thing” is still implied somewhere in the descriptions for lovemaking.

Next!

Instalove. Roommates. Friends With Benefits. Just A Fling.

I’m not fond of Just A Fling, since it implies a lack of emotional & at least some mental intimacy. But Instalove also does the same, and it’s trying to tell readers that infatuation = abiding love...when that often isn’t the case.

I’ve lived long enough to learn that infatuation is great, but rarely turns into an abiding love, because we rarely teach how to turn infatuation into an abiding, long-lasting love.

For these reasons, I love Roommates and Friends With Benefits, because you already know (or are getting to know) each other’s bad habits and other potentially annoying quirks...and yet you fall in love anyway, while knowing those things. That sort of journey has a lot more of the patience, understanding, and willingness to compromise on all sides that makes long-term love a genuine thing.

Just A Fling implies they know each other a bit more, or can get to know each other a bit more as they fall for each other. And yes, Instalove IS a thing, I’m not deying that...but you have to make the follow-up efforts to turn it into lasting love. I think it has more of an incentive to make those efforts than Just A Fling does...and it’s possible for Just A Fling to fit under Instalove (though it’ll be a bit of a squeeze) so I’m ditching Just A Fling.

On to the next quartet:

Enemies To Lovers. Forbidden Love. Unrequited Love. Second Chance.

A couple toughies in this one. Forbidden love...we still don’t have marriage & relationship equality, so that one’s staying right where it is, as it’s an analogy of how love should triumph over bigotry.

I’m more torn on the other three. Second Chance...sometimes there are good reasons to not give someone a second chance. Abusers can be very charming, and make all sorts of sweet-talking promises. Sometimes, however, two people are just in the wrong stage of life to make a go of it.

Unrequited Love runs the risk of crossing over into the ‘tragically friendzoned’ bullshit which is only viewing the narrative from that one person’s perspective. This is not to say that unrequited love is only ‘friendzoned through rose-colored glasses’, which it isn’t, but it is potentially problematic, unless it’s just another take on Friends To Lovers.

Enemies To Lovers has a lot of potential, but it needs to be realistic potential. Not just a “Hey, let’s pit the Hulk versus Thor, get ‘em mad at each other for no other reason than action sequences & giggles!” sort of plotless nonsense, but a genuine “these two have more in common than they ever realized, AND their antipathy hasn’t crossed into unforgivable awfulness toward each other territory.”

I think that Second Chance is going to have to be set aside. It was either that or Unrequited Love, but while Friends To Lovers can cover Unrequited Love...I really, reallydon’t want to send the message that “it’s okay to reunite with your abusive ex.” ...See? I can’t even write it without striking that “okay” out. It’s NOT okay. It never will be.

Secret Relationship. Secret Billionaire. Secret Baby. Secret Royal.

I’m fine with Secret Relationships...unless it’s cheating/adultery, in which case oh hell no. (Remember, I am polyamory-friendly, but polyamory ≠ cheating!!) But otherwise it’s fine.

Secret Baby sets my teeth on edge a little, because one should know about babies. The body bearing it has the right to choose to continue bearing it or withdraw consent, because we SHOULD have more rights to bodily autonomy than goddamn corpses, but mostly it’s a case of there’d better be A Damn GOOD Reason™ for hiding this child, robbing them of a presumably loving parent’s love for X period of time.

I’m very much anti-oligarchy, but to be honest, I’m much more inclined to believe a secret billionaire has run away to live a normal life (such as the child of a manipulative asshole running away from association with all that) than I am to believe in Secret Royalty anymore. It’s just...it’s overdone. it’s like HOW MANY DUKES EXISTED in the Regency era?? It’s lost its believability potential that’s all. So out with the Secret Royal (for now)!

Mistaken Identity. Amnesia. In Disguise. In Peril.

Amnesia. Kicking that one out the door right away. It’s overdone, it doesn’t work the way it’s most often displayed, and I just know too much about the actual medical condition to enjoy it.

Mind you, pretending to have Amnesia is fine! That’s “In Disguise” right then & there, lol...but no, the other three tropes are far better than that old rag. *tosses it away!*

Duke. Cowboy. Tycoon. Athlete.

...You’d think that from my rant above regarding Secret Royals, I’d kick out Duke as a category. I won’t. I just want to see Dukes (and other nobility titles) in other eras than just Regency and/or modern. So overdone in those eras, but not in others.

Athletes...I’m not into sports. I’m not a sporty-sport type. I don’t read those books so I don’t know how overdone the tropes are, though I’ve only noticed them coming into prominence in fanficdom in the last ten to fifteen years, with the HP fandom being big on quidditch-based fanfic stories.

Now, Cowboys are a bit overglamorized, but...they’re working class types, and if you get some actual honest work-on-the-farm or work-on-the-ranch scenes in there, and it’s believable? That’s still okay.

Tycoons are overused, too...but unlike Billionaires, you can be a Tycoon in a lot of different ways. Sometimes via money, sometimes via some sort of monopoly--like the company that owns the company store, town, people, etc. Still...being a tycoon means you (or your family) has done something to monopolize money, business, property, etc...and I despise the oligarchy. So since most tycoon stories don’t talk about paying employees above a livable wage, or constantly improving the living conditions in the company-owned town, etc...fuq ‘em. *punts them outta town, covered in tar & feathers*

(I never said I’d be consistent, just that these are my opinions per category group. I’m evaluating every quartet solely against its fellow members, even if I reference other groups or categories.)

Flick. Pierce. Spear. Breach.

...Unless these are in reference to combat, only Flick should remain, because the others all make me think of combat more than lovemaking. However...that being said, we’re only supposed to discard just the one, so I think I’ll get rid of Breach.

Why Breach? The bullshit misogyny of virginity culture, and the absolute anatomical awfulness of writers who don’t know where the goddamn hymen is.

...i could go into a very long rant about where the hymen is, what it’s shaped like, why it doesn’t have to be torn and spurt oodles of visible blood when you’re making love for the first time, blah blah blah--and why if you do get that happening, you 1. haven’t taken care of your partner’s needs AT ALL, and 2. clearly have never heard of lubrication, and 3. ARE SEVERELY INJURING YOUR PARTNER, wtf is sexy about THAT??--but I’ll digress and simply say that virginity is utter bullshit, patriarchal and misogynistic BULLSHIT, and it needs to go away!

Kthxbai!

Blackmail. Revenge. Bully. Kidnapped.

...Can we do away with all of these?

...No?

...Just get rid of one only?

...Dammit.

Ummm...if these are -between- the love interests, blackmail has to have a really good plot reason behind it, but there are a few conceivable ones. Revenge, too. Gotta have a good reason behind it.

Bullying is not something I care for at all, got that too much as a kid, and that shit HURTS. It takes a lot to forgive a bully all the horrible things they did, and if it’s a case of “they’re only bullying you because they love you and this is how they show it” that shit is NASTIER, because it’s the “you should put up with being abused because it’s how he shows he loves you.” OH HELL NO.

Kidnapped...nope. That’s the Bad version of Alpha bullshit I don’t like either. Though as with Blackmail, there has to be a solid reason AND there has to be some atonement for the kidnapping, PLUS TIME AWAY FROM EACH OTHER, and time spent getting to know each other in a non-Stockholm Syndrome non-Lima Syndrome sort of way...

I think we’ll get rid of Bullying, even though part of me really wants to ditch Kidnapping...if only because of the message listed above is NOT the message that should be absorbed by anyone.

Pirates. Medieval. Highlander. Regency.

Medieval and Highlander both still have a BROAD range of eras they can choose from, literal hundreds of centuries, plus Medieval can mean much more than just the British Isles for its setting...and you could have a Highlander traveling to Hungary or Italy or wherever.

Regency on the one hand is overdone and has been overdone quite a lot. I’d love to see something else, BUT at the same time I acknowledge it’s a much-beloved juggernaut. Just...tone down the numbers of Dukes and Earls for the love of population distribution statistics, and I’ll be much happier!

Pirates...are kinda fun on the one hand...but also an over-glamorization of horrible people doing horrible things for a living, on the other. I’d only keep Pirates as a category if you PROMISED to do some non-European pirates...and since that’s not likely to happen... *flicks the Pirates off their own plank*

(I hate having to do that as I’m a proud Birate, but it’s not quite the same thing, so...oh well!)

Dragons. Wolves. Vampires. Bears.

*kicks Vampires off the plank as well*

Wolves are almost overdone as a trope, but vampires jumped the shark tank long ago, so I’m sure they’ll be fine after walking the plank, right?

There still aren’t enough Dragon stories, Wolves may be a little overdone with the ABO stuff, but there are so many other possibilities that could be explored, and Bears are an excellent example of exploring other shapeshifter types. (No Dragons in Nalini Singh’s psy-changeling books, but there ARE changeling wolves and changeling bears, and remember, they have awesome Alphas who are actually NOT douchebags!)

Needs more Changecats or Werecats or whatever, but that’s just me.

Sexy Space. Sexy Time Travel. Sexy Apocalypse. Sexy Fantasy.

Ditch the Sexy Apocalypse. There’s no such thing. It’s an oxymoron. An apocalypse is the opposite of sexy, because everything is being destroyed.

There’s plenty of Sexy Fantasy, but there’s always room for more. There’s almost as much Sexy Time Travel, and plenty of eras & places left to be explored. And there is not enough Sexy Space stories. (Tho’ I’m working on that!)

But ditch the Apocalypse stuff. It’s just not sexy at all.

Royal & Lionheart. Beauty & Beast. Celebrity & Bodyguard. Warrior & Bard.

Not enough Warrior & Bard stories, definitely keeping that one!

Beauty & Beast is a bit overdone, but it sends a good message about how external beauty standards and external beauty tropes are overrated.

However...I’ll confess I’m not familar with Royal & Lionheart. If it means royalty and the strong right arm that defends them, the head of the armies falling in love with the head of state...then I’m fine with that, not enough of that. (Seriously, this is the first time I’ve heard of this one.)

So I guess we’ll ditch Celebrity & Bodyguard...because that’s 1. an unequal balance of power between employer and employee, and 2. falling for the person you’re trying to protect means your thoughts are not going to stay on the job nearly enough of the time. That could put your client in serious danger...and that’s a trope I don’t want to encourage as “emulation-worthy.”

Slow Burn. Angst. Fluff. Mutual Pining.

Slow Burn can be frustrating if not done right...but I love Fluff, and Mutual Pining has some serious Comedy of Errors potential. Seriously, who doesn’t love a good comedy? (So long as there’s a good resolution, of course.)

I’ve had too rough a year, however, to want Angst around right now. It can come back later, but...sorry, Angst, there’s the door. *gently shows Angst to the door* Come back in half a year, mkay?

...

That’s the last of the trope groupings! Feel free to play with this one yourselves.

#tw #brief mention of abusive ex tropes #mention of abuse #mostly it's just discussing why I dislike a certain trope for Reasons™

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lifejustgotawkward · 7 years ago

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365 Day Movie Challenge (2017) - #348: Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - dir. Denis Villeneuve

As the end credits rolled on Blade Runner 2049 last Sunday night at the Regal Union Square multiplex, I turned to my friend and asked her my usual question, “So, what did you think?” She groaned out, “that was really boring,” and the wave of relief I felt at her response was the perfect summation of my feelings.

How did Blade Runner 2049 disappoint me? Let me count the ways.

I watched Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner (1982) back in September. I was impressed, though not bowled over, by the theatrical cut, but I still wanted to give the final cut a chance. When I got around to watching that “definitive” version, I found that I actually missed Harrison Ford’s gruff, noiresque narration from the earlier edit of the film, but overall my appreciation for Blade Runner had grown and the second viewing allowed me to focus less on the plot and to better appreciate both the acting and the technical aspects of the production.

My expectations for Blade Runner 2049 were fairly high. I was eager to see how Denis Villeneuve built on Scott’s (and, of course, writer Philip K. Dick’s) visions of dystopian Los Angeles by pushing the narrative thirty years further into the future from the first Blade Runner’s setting in 2019. Although I missed the chance to see this new installment in IMAX - hey, those tickets are expensive when you don’t have spare cash to throw around! - I knew I still had to take the time to watch the film on the big screen. No TV could possibly do justice to an epic sci-fi tale of the Blade Runner variety, at least not for an introductory experience.

Bear with me, now, when I say that Blade Runner 2049 was a massive letdown. Yes, Roger Deakins’ stunning cinematography is practically guaranteed to earn him an Oscar nomination. And yes, the art direction, production design and set decoration further supports Denis Villeneuve‘s strengths regarding compelling visuals. I would also be totally fine with Renée April getting an Oscar nomination for costume design since the coat that Officer K (Ryan Gosling) wears throughout the film is incredible. Unfortunately, for the third year in a row (after Sicario and Arrival) my hopes for Villeneuve’s work have been dashed. For three years running he has fallen short of his ambitious ideas, whether attempting to concentrate on an idealistic DEA agent (Emily Blunt in Sicario), a linguist simultaneously mourning the death of her daughter and trying to make contact with aliens (Amy Adams in Arrival) or a Replicant Blade Runner (Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049) who unravels a mystery about a female Replicant who was able to bear a child. All of these protagonists should be worthy of my undivided attention. Instead, Gosling - like one of Nexus’s new edition of Replicants - is just another in a continuing line of failed leads.

Part of the issue is Ryan Gosling’s own fault. In interviews I find him absolutely delightful, a funny and self-deprecating guy with a nicely offbeat sense of humor; in movies he is unremittingly bland. Whether we’re talking about The Notebook or Crazy, Stupid, Love or The Big Short, he never seems to have any discernible personality on film. It makes sense, then, that he would be chosen to play an android in Blade Runner 2049. But what does it say that he didn’t even play Officer K well? Replicants can be portrayed with emotion, if you recall Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, Brion James and Joanna Cassidy in the original Blade Runner. Each actor breathed life into their characters in unique styles. So why couldn’t Villeneuve and screenwriters Hampton Fancher and Michael Green find a way to inject some flavor into their film’s characters?

The posters for Blade Runner 2049 imply that Harrison Ford and Jared Leto play important roles in the film, but in actuality, Leto’s “antagonist,” Niander Wallace, barely has any screen time and Ford’s returning antihero, Rick Deckard, doesn’t show up until the last third of the film. I enjoyed every moment he was onscreen, spitting his dialogue out with the same jaded sarcasm he had in the first film, but I wish the character had had more time to develop in the film. Wallace bears an undistinguished aura of evil, but what was supposed to be so special about him? Given the spotlight often put on his sightless eyes during “creepy” closeups, was his blindness really intended to be read as part of what defined him as bad (in which case, uh, what is that saying about disabilities)?

Next we have to take a look at the women of Blade Runner 2049. There are six notable female characters: Joi (Ana de Armas), a hologram who is a product created by Niander Wallace and who functions solely as K’s live-in girlfriend; Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), a Replicant who acts as Niander Wallace’s right-hand woman; Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), K’s supervisor on the police force; Mariette (Mackenzie Davis), a "pleasure model” Replicant; Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri), who works for the Wallace corporation in a capacity that I shouldn’t spoil for those who have not seen the film; and Freysa (Hiam Abbass), who plays a role that I similarly should not divulge. Of these six, Joi and Ana Stelline are the most sympathetic characters, but regardless of how these women’s actions are meant to be interpreted, the designs of these ladies are problematic.

Joi is an immediately likeable character, but since she is a product (and one who does not initially have a corporeal form), she does not have autonomy. With the push of a button, K can turn her off any time he wants, which I’m sure is an option a lot of dudes wish they had available for their girlfriends. Joi exists only to serve K, telling him how wonderful he is when he gets home from a long work day and providing whatever eye candy he desires (she can shapeshift to alter her clothing, hair and makeup). Should I ignore the fact that Joi has zero character development and applaud Blade Runner 2049 anyway for highlighting the ickiness of a future society where Joi-models are prevalent (thus eliminating the need for actual human women)? Maybe, but the film doesn’t bother to make a statement about this element of social interaction, other than the fact that it exists.

K is finally able to experience physical contact with Joi when she “syncs” with Mariette, a prostitute, to combine their bodies for a sexual encounter with K, resulting in my favorite shot in the film: an unsettling image of Joi and Mariette’s four blurry hands wrapping around the back of K’s head and caressing his hair. While this interlude incorporates an interesting degree of romantic intrigue - to what extent do K, Joi and Mariette understand what love is? - there is something a little too weird in the film’s dependence on the Madonna and Whore tropes, suggesting an either/or dichotomy where the only time a woman can possess both attributes is when she finds another person (technically a Replicant) who can temporarily provide the missing skills.

Luv is probably the best-developed female character, although since she is Niander Wallace’s servant, it is impossible to say where her allegiance to him ends and her own taste for violent retribution begins. Luv seems to genuinely savor hurting people, but I suppose that attitude was programmed into her by Wallace, which somewhat minimizes the cool factor in her badass fight scenes. It’s kind of odd, though, that she manages to outshine the film’s other resident tough gal, Lt. Joshi (I didn’t think anyone could outdo Robin Wright in this department, especially after Wonder Woman). Villeneuve and his writers couldn’t settle on how best to represent Joshi, so the character fluctuates between a generically butch stereotype and a leering boss who drinks too much and flirts with K. Again, not that women have to be only one thing, but I like consistency in characters rather than mixed messages. I wonder how much of Blade Runner 2049′s muddled and archaic depictions of women are thanks to Hampton Fancher, who also co-wrote the original Blade Runner’s screenplay, which was full of troublesome approaches to womanhood, sexuality and sexual consent.

In the end, the difference between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 is like the distinction between a human being and a Replicant. 2049 tries to live up to the originality of that which inspired it, but it lacks the soul of its predecessor. It really says something that the most heartfelt moments in Blade Runner 2049 are two references to Ridley Scott’s film: a pivotal scene in Wallace’s lair that conjures up the memory of Rachael (Sean Young) from the film, and a moment in the penultimate scene that reuses a key piece of music from Vangelis’s original Blade Runner score. I recognize that many viewers see Blade Runner 2049 as a masterpiece, and I have tried many times in the past week to understand why, but I’m hard-pressed to comprehend why I should have spent close to three hours sitting through such an unsatisfying project, other than being able to say I bravely weathered this particular storm.

P.S. (because I couldn’t figure out where else to write this): I don’t know how many viewers will know where I’m coming from, but for the cult classic freaks out there, let me propose this theory: Blade Runner 2049 is trying to be like Paul Morrissey’s notoriously wild horror-satire Flesh for Frankenstein (1973). Check it out: a really bizarre and wealthy man (Udo Kier/Jared Leto) and his devoted assistant (Arno Juerging/Sylvia Hoeks) endeavor to construct a set of superhumans (FfF) or humanoid robots (B42049), entities that will give birth to a new generation of superbeings that will take the place of their inferior progenitors and obediently do their master’s (Kier/Leto) bidding. In fact, there are two specific scenes that reminded me of Flesh for Frankenstein while watching Blade Runner 2049: when Niander Wallace kills the naked, infertile Replicant woman (ugh, what a terrible scene), it mirrors a moment in Flesh when Arno Juerging, the loyal assistant, tries to commence sex with Baron Frankenstein’s female zombie-monster by punching her in the stomach and fatally damaging her internal organs, resulting in a grotesque display of violence similar to what we see in Blade Runner 2049.

Secondly, when Luv battles K at the sea wall and she kisses him, she is mimicking an action that Niander Wallace carried out when he killed the Replicant woman; this is also reminiscent of Flesh for Frankenstein since the Arno Juerging character often does horrible, perverse things - like conflating his lust for the female zombie with a disturbingly compulsion for violence - because he is following his master’s patterns. Take all that analysis for what it’s worth, Blade Runner fans!

P.P.S. I am also convinced that Blade Runner 2049′s Las Vegas wasteland scene was either an homage to or a ripoff of Nastassja Kinski’s desert dream sequence from another of 1982′s finest cult offerings, Cat People. Even in the slightly faded YouTube upload of the clip, the orangeness cannot be overlooked.

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zmediaoutlet · 7 years ago

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my own private omegaverse

No, not private at all, but that’s such an excellent movie name I couldn’t help but steal it.

For starters: I love the omegaverse. I love its creativity and the shared ‘canons’ and tropes that people came up with, and I really love that (apparently) the first a/b/o story came about in SPN. That seems right, somehow.

However, being me, I started overthinking the premise, and started talking with my scientist SIL about viable evolution and biological factors, and started talking with my friends about societal structure, and also I always far prefer something as... realistic as possible, so then I started thinking about how you could make an omegaverse that felt as close to real life as possible while still having that edge of the fantastic. (Verisimilitude is my fave, what can I say.) So, with much thought, I’ve put down stakes and claimed my own little corner of the ‘verse, which will be shaped in a way that makes the most sense to me. If I ever get off my ass and actually write something in the genre, it’ll be supported by this.

So:

SEXES

The hallmark of all a/b/o is that there are multiple sexes, not just the traditionally-recognized two of our world. Here, we have:

Man - the ‘alpha’, what we’d consider to be a ‘normal’ man in our world. Phenotypically masculine, generally taller and stronger than the other two sexes; testicles produce sperm; the penis has a small knot which may engorge on orgasm, but often only during sex with halmen in heat, in response to halman pheromones.

Woman - corresponds almost entirely to women in our world. Phenotypically feminine, generally smaller than the other two sexes; ovaries produce eggs; typical monthly menstruation cycle with corresponding fertility rate. Historically women have had high maternal mortality rates due to the stress of pregnancy.

Halman - the ‘omega.’ (Etymologically, halman is a blend of half + man from Old English. Other languages have different names for the third sex, e.g. French parfemme [partie + femme].) Phenotypically, they’re more masculine, being generally taller than women with more upper body strength. However, they also have wider hips and a strong lower body to aid in pregnancy. Halmen have ovaries and produce eggs, but have a much slower cycle than women; covert menstruation takes place four times per year. The peak of fertility in each cycle is marked by a very high hormone response and an accompanying output of light pheromones to attract men. Halmen have extremely low rates of conception except during these ‘heat’ cycles; however, they also have extremely low rates of maternal mortality. Their clitoris is very large due to higher levels of testosterone and also contains the urinary tract; it could be mistaken for a small penis, but for the lack of testicles behind it. Halmen have no vagina, but instead conceive and bear children through the colon; an epiglottis protects the cervix and uterus from fecal matter, and opens during orgasm and for a short period after to admit semen.

Sex ratio, approx.: M: 45%; W: 30%; H: 25%.

SEXUALITY

Straight: man/woman; man/halman Queer: man/man; woman/woman; woman/halman; halman/halman

Many countries around the world have been slowly allowing queer marriages of various types, starting in the latter part of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. The United Kingdom allowed any marriage between two legally consenting adults starting in 2014; the United States had individual state laws (California: any two legally consenting adults; Colorado: m/m and w/w allowed, but not w/h or h/h; multiple states only allowing m/w or m/h), until the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015 legalized all versions of two-person consenting-adult marriages.

GENDER

Men are masculine, women are feminine. This is simple, and yet also incredibly complex. Men and women both navigate the tumultuous waters of what this means for themselves, their families, and their society. Halmen are even more complex than that. While they (with women) have been granted mostly equal rights to men, the question for many young halmen sons is what their gender identity will be, in these modern days. Part of the ‘problem’ is that the archetype for what a halman should be has shifted quite a bit, even over the course of the last fifty years.

Spartan halmen often served in the army and there are records of Roman halmen Senators. Western civilization since the dark ages has traditionally put halmen in a more feminine context, however. While halmen of the lower classes worked in agriculture and crafting, they were not allowed to join the army and were instead diverted to non-combat roles with women, e.g. nursing. In the upper classes, a halman son’s behavior and movements were often as restricted as a daughter’s were, because a halman’s virginity and child-bearing potential were just as valuable as a woman’s. Some cultures demanded larger dowries for halman brides, because offspring would be born more slowly. (On the other hand, many families in Renaissance Italy and Spain took lower dowries when marrying their son to a halman bride, because halmen were less likely to die in childbirth than a female mother.)

In Western culture, low-income/peasant class halmen traditionally wore loose trousers (sometimes topped with short skirts/kilts to indicate their gender) until marriage, and would switch to skirts/gowns upon their entry into the life of a wife and mother. Middle and upper-class halmen skewed toward more feminine clothing, with halmen sons entering society being fitted with suits with wide necklines to show off their broad shoulders, and tight bodices to show off their narrow waists and wide hips. Skirts ranged from floor-length (for the more modest) to a higher hemline paired with soft trousers or hose (for a more daring look)--acceptable hemlines also rose and fell with fashion, but no halman would wear trousers alone in polite society.

In modern days, the halman ‘archetype’ is more difficult to define. A pretty face and a lightly muscled, trim body are expected, but the upheavals of the sexual revolution and the fight for gender equality have left expectations more uncertain. A “good wife” seen in catalogs from the 1950s would have long hair, nicely applied makeup, no unwanted facial or body hair, subtle jewelry, and clothing would likely be modest and feminine, with high necklines and low hems. Halmen started to wear trousers in public slightly earlier than women, but the fashion for a longer, tunic-style top remained--covering the groin was still considered polite, especially considering the difficulties faced by some halmen during heat cycles. However, the 1960s and ‘70s challenged what a ‘good halman’ should look like, and depending on their preference some halmen started to wear much more masculine clothing, some of them even trying to ‘pass’ as men. Halmen started to join the military in active-combat roles (although there remain court battles as to whether hormonal cycle control should be required for deployed halmen soldiers, or whether that is an unacceptable incursion on bodily autonomy, even for the armed forces), and there has been an increase in halmen going for ‘men’s’ jobs (halmen CEOs are still considered to be breaking the glass ceiling).

Now, halmen seek their role models in all walks of life. A deeply plunging neckline to show off a flat chest on a young halman is still considered somewhat immodest, but also sexy and free; tight jeans cut to emphasize nice hips and show off a small bulge are the norm, not the exception as it might have been in their mothers’ day. Once a halman has given birth and his breasts have grown during lactation, lower necklines are fashionable to show off the briefly possible cleavage--though some more conservative halmans keep their necklines high to avoid immodesty. It is still extremely rare for halmen to let their scant facial hair grow out (though famous halman artist Salvador Dali’s cultivation of his mustache is a symbol among halman ‘wolves’), but more have embraced their light body hair after the fashion for going completely bare in the 1980s. Actor Cillian Murphy, a halman who has famously played both men and halmen characters, goes for different looks in his personal life--“Why would I restrict myself to just the halman section in the department store? That’s boring. I wear what I want, and if any men have a problem with that--well, they’re not men I would want to date anyway, are they?”

Murphy in Vanity Fair, 2004.

Murphy in his controversial GQ covershoot, 2006.

#writing #my writing #omegaverse #i cannot tell you how much fun i have with this kind of thing #welcome to liz's omegaverse textbook #and i can go on and on #but this is good for now #--also just so you know #that pic of c.m. is from breakfast on pluto #an *excellent* film where he plays a transgender lady #highly recommended #(but i've stolen it to make a point here--sorry cillian)#next thing should probably be: what does rebellion look like #and how do women fit in #i feel like halmen could always be doctors and stuff #teachers and professors #but maternity leave would still be a problem

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ruthellisneda · 6 years ago

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Why You Need a Feeling of Importance

I’ve been re-reading the book How to Make Friends and Influence People (arguably the first self-development book ever written) and getting a lot out of it.

Dale Carnegie’s assertion that all humans are looking for a sense of importance really strikes me.

This is the basic principle of the book, upon which all of his other observations are built, and I absolutely agree– although I tend to get more specific, and say all humans are looking for love, attention, acceptance, approval, respect, and belonging.

We’re saying the same thing though.

Let’s take a look at the relationship the need to feel a sense of importance has on a person’s self-worth.

Our self-worth and self-esteem are often created by things which give us that sense of importance. While self-love comes from inside, it is extremely difficult to cultivate without some feedback from the people around you that you are valuable and valued, especially during formative childhood years.

A feeling of importance is somewhat relational by nature, as you can’t exactly feel it in a vacuum. You might experience a feeling of importance in relationship with another person, group, community, animal, plant, or even things such as a teddy bear or the weather.

The problem I see, especially when it comes to body image, is that the need for a feeling of importance becomes badly distorted.

A person will get a natural feeling of importance from whatever they are noticed, praised, and celebrated for as children and as they grow into adults, and our gender plays a role in how this is expressed.

Boys are taught that the only way to be important is to be tough, strong, stoic, and in a word: masculine. Through positive reinforcement when he is brave and strong, and negative reinforcement when he is insufficiently masculine, a boy will grow up into a man whose feeling of importance is distorted.

We see this effect now in toxic masculinity, through violence, a man’s feeling of entitlement to women’s bodies or sexual attention, and a need to control or oppress others in order to prove his importance.

Girls on the other hand are sent the message that they can only get a feeling of importance by being “pretty” and “good.” (“Good” in this context means they don’t require attention or effort from anyone.)

As girls grow up, we learn that being desirable, specifically to men, and being selfless, are the only acceptable places from which to draw a feeling of importance.

This message is learned over and over through positive reinforcement, like attention, praise, and celebration for how pretty, beautiful, cute, sexy, and “good” (aka quiet, passive, polite, and free of needs) we are.

It’s also learned through negative reinforcement when we are bullied or shamed for our physical flaws, or punished for being “needy,” “crazy,” or “difficult” when we have feelings or needs.

The toxic effect is that the vast majority of women suffer from negative body image, body anxiety, and obsession over food, weight, shape, and perceived flaws, and try desperately to hide anything that might make someone displeased or inconvenienced, including our true personalities, needs, opinions, and full selves.

If we all seek a feeling of importance, this need gets badly distorted more often than not.

Often we end up feeling a sense of competition, a need to prove that we are better than other people. For men this tends to mean violence, oppression, and making people do what they want. For women this tends to mean jealousy, insecurity, and controlling their food intake and body/appearance.

For everyone, it means being disconnected from each other, as the feeling of importance becomes a zero sum game, a competition for a finite amount of “importance”; a feeling that there is never enough to go around, and that someone else getting any means less for you.

We begin to view each other as enemies, thinking that other people are trying to steal what is rightfully ours, be that attention, a social niche, a partner, financial success, or anything else that gives a person a distorted feeling of importance.

So what’s the solution? Is it ok to need a feeling of importance, and if so where should it come from?

I say yes, it’s normal and natural and completely ok– but it doesn’t need to be a competition.

Let’s paint a hypothetical picture.

* Imagine as a child, you grew up in a home where the adults really listened to you, were interested in you, gave you clear and consistent boundaries, opened loving discussions for feedback when your behavior was out of bounds, you were treated with respect and bodily autonomy, and you were taught that the only person whose experience you are responsible for is your own.

* Imagine you were praised for how hard you worked to learn, instead of “being smart.” For how courageous you were to keep trying at something, instead of “being talented.” For how your presence impacted people in specific and positive ways, instead of just “being pretty” or “being good.”

* Now imagine as an adult that you live in a community of people who truly see and respect you, where kindness and belonging is the default.

* Imagine people look you in the eyes, and all strangers assume they will like you when you first meet.

* Imagine people take the time to ask you questions and really listen to your answers, and are willing to open up and be vulnerable in response, that people are transparent and clear when they’re upset with you and need something, and are equally transparent and clear when they are grateful for, inspired by, admiring, or adoring you.

* Imagine you express your authentic self freely, and regularly share your gifts with your community, which are received gratefully whether those gifts are creativity, hard work, humor, vision, empathy, particular skills, or physical strength. Imagine you are called upon when your gifts are needed and people express genuine appreciation, and you know that asking others for support is a gift to them because it makes them feel good to be able to help.

In this hypothetical, each person’s sense of importance wouldn’t need to come from being better than anyone else. It wouldn’t come from competition, or status, or proving or earning your worth.

How much differently do you think you might feel about your body or appearance, if this was the world you lived in? How much less urgency might you feel to be prettier, sexier, thinner, or more perfect?

I don’t have a solution, of course, but I think it’s worth considering that a lot of body image issues really come down to a distorted desire to get a feeling of importance, in a world that tells women that they are not important unless they are desirable to someone else.

Thoughts?

<3 Jessi

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