#monoloth point stands

[thenonesenseofladypole]

ooooh, finally, i get 2001 A Space Odyssey

HELL YES, look how scared they are at the public's reaction, this is amazing

[talkingsquidphd]

Review: Scott Westerfeld, “Spill Zone”

Full disclosure: for getting me so into sf I decided to pursue a graduate degree in it, Scott Westerfeld can probably claim equal credit alongside Douglas Adams and my sf-paperback-loving dad. As a teen, I loved Westerfeld’s books for two reasons. One, Westerfeld’s protagonists tended to spend a lot of time exploring forests and mountains in ways that made my seemingly parallel rural New England surroundings more magical. After reading Uglies, for example, the sight of disused train tracks winding off into the woods gave me a little thrill as I imagined Tally and company hoverboarding along them. Two, Westerfeld was one of the few authors I knew who consistently delivered young adult (YA) dystopia that treated its protagonists neither as children, as does a frustrating, infantilizing subset of YA, nor as adults, as does an equally frustrating, overmaturizing subset of the genre. Rather, Westerfeld treats his teen protagonists as that ever-shifting, conflicted, and deeply powerful third entity entirely: actual teenagers.

Part of this has to do with how Westerfeld handles the “Chosen One” trope so prevalent in YA, in which the protagonist discovers they are some unique exception to an otherwise universal rule and therefore the only one who – supported by the “friendship” of Not-So-Chosen-Ones – can save the world. Not long ago, I heard Canadian sf author Jo Walton frame the difference between American and Canadian YA dystopia largely based on how each handles this trope. While American YA dystopia is about a Chosen One saving the world by overthrowing some monolothic institutional hegemony, Canadian YA dystopia tends to be about an average teen trying (and sometimes failing) to save their neighborhood by doing the best they can. According to Walton, this is a microcosm of the difference between American and Canadian sf – while American sf often explores fantasies of political agency, Canadian sf tends to be about people without that agency still trying to get things done. By Walton’s standards, Westerfeld’s YA dystopia intriguingly comes down somewhere in the middle; while his protagonists are often Chosen Ones who have special powers and/or lead amazingly coordinated political resistances, the fight is often not stacked in their favor, the “power of friendship” is no silver bullet, and they don’t always win. This adds real stakes – stakes that many products of the YA dystopia boom seem too timid to wager.

Little wonder, then, that when I picked up Spill Zone – my first Westerfeld in years – I spent 90% of my first reading trying to decide whether it was A) YA and B) the kind of fiction I had so idolized Westerfeld for writing in my youth. The answer to A, I decided, was ultimately not as important as I first thought. The answer to B, I am happy to report, is a firm yes.

To touch briefly on the graphic novel’s YA-ness – it’s definitely a mistake to assume Spill Zone is straightforward YA from its seemingly straightforward YA dust-jacket premise: Addison, a teenage girl with a camera and a younger sister to feed, regularly sneaks into a forbidden, bizarro-world nuclear fallout zone near her house and takes photos to sell to a black-market art world eager for a peek inside the “Spill Zone.” While this describes the starting conditions of the plot, it primed me to expect from Spill Zone a “freedom of press” story, its driving conflict between a rebellious teen artist and authoritarian forces trying to conceal what could be a government cover-up. Not so.

In the course of its 200-page run, Spill Zone quickly takes five or six left turns into even weirder territory, eventually boasting a plot which involves animate telepathic stuffed animals, heavily mutated talking wolves who somehow know Addison’s name, and a parallel “Spill Zone” and survivor in North Korea. Yes, North Korea. The result is a dark and original premise that gets darker and stranger with each turn of the page. Content-wise, there are definitely bits that would probably make librarians think twice about shelving Spill Zone as YA, including a few f-bombs, but I hesitate to hang my “YA-or-nay” judgment on these moments. After all, Westerfeld’s books never pulled punches, from the flesh-stripping, bone-shaving plastic surgery of the Uglies series to the terrifying metaphysics of Midnighters to the graphic epidemiology of Peeps and The Last Days. That Westerfeld always pushes the envelope a bit with his YA is part of why I loved it so much as a teen.

Moving swiftly on to how Spill Zone stacks up against earlier Westerfeld, all I can say is I wish Westerfeld had collaborated on graphic novels in my formative years, because Alex Puvilland’s art is what kicks Spill Zone up a level. With a style that hovers in the territory between iconic cartoonishness and hasty, gritty sketchiness, Puvilland’s visuals straddle the child-adult line even as Westerfeld’s writing does. The pointed juxtaposition of color palettes – an earthy range with grey undertones for the outside world versus an eerie but invitingly bright pastels for the Spill Zone – separates the two areas visually while also characterizing them. While the outside world is functional, dull, and a little gruff, the Spill Zone holds at once the neon wonder and unnatural horror of the unexpected. Most of all, Puvilland’s visuals convey the strange simultaneous motion and stillness of the Spill Zone. Addison’s decription of the effect overlays a series of portraits of brightly colored frozen tornadoes hovering in midair:

Standing waves pop up all over the Spill Zone… Dust devils that never settle. Unending ripples on a telephone wire. Amber waves of grain, waving even when the air is absolutely still. In motion, but so posed. A photographer’s dream. (58.1-59.1)

The art is at its best when the panels take on Addison’s first-person view of the Spill Zone as seen through the lens of her camera. On a basic level, this technique adds extra drama to sequences like chase scenes in which Addison is being run down by monstrous denizens of the Zone. But panels which superimpose the aiming sights of Addison’s camera on the view at hand are often the moments in which the graphic novel is giving the story’s photography thematics the most room to play. Perhaps the most intriguing threat the Spill Zone poses, for example, is its flat zones, where buildings, objects, and even people have been flattened into two-dimensional images, seemingly trapped in the surface of sidewalks and roads. Touching these flattened subjects, we learn, means being flattened oneself. Scenes where Addison must avoid the outlines of these terrified, two-dimensional people who have been flattened into the asphalt seem evocative of her necessarily conflicted attitude to her own photography and the Spill Zone as a whole.

While Addison’s trips to the Zone to make both art and money are more than justified by her situation, the enterprise is faintly tainted with the selective (and, in some ways, exploitative) view of the Spill Zone which her photography conveys. Addison attempts to combat this with a series of invented rules about her trips to the Spill Zone; most importantly, she never photographs the dead, many of whom have been reanimated as static “meat puppets” by the strange power of the Zone. Addison’s reticence to photograph certain subjects combined with her fear of the flattened begs the question: is Addison, through her photography, flattening the horror of the Spill Zone by presenting it as a commercializable visual narrative? Is her photography any different than the kitschy cafes and souvenir shops which are also shown to profit off the Zone? Some would argue that both the top-secret mission Addison undertakes on behalf of the North Korean government and the novel’s superhero-origin-story cliffhanger ending move Spill Zone past petty quibbles over the ethics of her photography project and on to more heart-pounding dilemmas. I, however, sincerely hope that the series doesn’t lose this thread moving forward, as Addison’s conflicted artistry is in my view what most makes her a worthy and classic Westerfeld protagonist.

Spill Zone isn’t flawless. As the first installment in a series with clear ambitions to juggle a lot of characters and tricky topics, the graphic novel (perhaps forgivably) tosses some things in the air that either never seem to come down or bonk you on the head at odd moments. For example, a character who I had comfortably relegated to the “side character” bin of my mind palace elbows his way into the main plot in the final pages, exuding vibes of shoehorning in a romance subplot at the last minute. I would love to be proven wrong about this, but the jury will presumably be out until Westerfeld and Puvilland get us a sequel – one only hopes they won’t keep us waiting the seven years it took to assemble Spill Zone. For now, though, Spill Zone is everything I wanted in a new Westerfeld – fiercely loyal to the YA dystopia I still love in a way that is utterly compelling to me ten years later as a PhD in English and returns me to the roots of my passion for sf.

[aducklingrants]

dilemma // am i simply just culturally muslim?

This whole fighting for justice thing is really tiring sometimes. Even when what you're doing is trying to defend human rights, there will always be people who come knocking into your house saying that the way that you're trying to do it is wrong. I feel like it'd be easier if I wasn't Muslim, that way at least I don't have to experience the crushing guilt whenever I read something that I know my family will find outrageous, and finding myself thinking that this person's way of thinking can be understandable. Today, that thing is the argument that we should be able to reform Islam, and that, my friend, is a very controversial issue even to me, who is so far from what my parents hope their Muslim daughter would be. As it turns out, what the person meant to say when they say "reform Islam" is not what I was thinking, which is a bunch of people tearing into the Koran and deleting violent verses from it, which is scary. One of the signs of the world coming to and end according to Islam is when the Koran starts to disappear, and dude, I really don't want to be alive when the end comes because I'm not ready to pay for my sins. ...and even as we're speaking, I'm making any more sins because I'm doing, theoritically, what a Muslim shouldn't do--questioning the perfectness of their faith. And I know some will come to my door and tell that I can, as a person I have the rights to thinking and opinions, but I just can't shake the feeling that I shouldn't, you know? Oh, God, and what I did was make me seem oppressed, which isn't helping to the problem. Jeez. Why is trying to do the right thing so hard? Anyway, turns out what they mean by reform is simply making it clear that Islam is "not a monolothic idea" and that Islam is practiced in a lot of different ways and that no one should view Muslims as just this one perfect person who prays five times a day and reads the Koran daily. (That is the kind of Muslim that I want to be, though.) They do have a point, and I agree with them. Because Islam is practiced differently according to where you are. Indonesia is the biggest Muslim country and we don't do the thing that Saudi Arabia claims the Sharia Law. Because Muslims do come in various forms. Asians, Europeans, Africans, they can be Muslim. My only problem with this person is that they call Islam an idea and that's not... really what I think it is. Because idea implies that it comes from something human, while Islam comes from a pure place that humans can't touch. It comes from God. The other thing that they say is that I don't initially agree with, but eventually see the point is that ISIS is Islam. They explain later that what they mean is that ISIS comes from a very wrong interpretation of the Koran. And it's all fun and games and then they say, "Let's be honest. A lot of religions are violent," and goes to qute a very misplaced violent sounding verse in the post, and I just sort of facepalm because that totally defeats her point. A lot of verses in the Koran, when taken out of context, can sound super disturbing, but that's why the Koran has chapters, because each verse is specific to the situation it represents. It's written that Muslims are allowed to fight non-believers, but that verse comes from the chapter when Muslims were just betrayed by them. So of course we're allowed to, because at the time it is necessary. But then I realize that was kind of their point. ISIS inherently took the most violent-sounding verses to justify the things that they did, just like the Taliban and the Boko Haram did. Just like why Muslims in Indonesia fought so hard to imprison Ahok, who may or may not have said one bad thing about Islam, just like they see what they're doing as jihad and completely demonize the entire Chinese minority population as bad. When it comes down to it, I realize the Muslims--these specific groups--are just lost in translation. Maybe that's why the Koran isn't allowed to be translated into multiple languages like the Bible, in fear of mis-translation. But then, it has happened. And then, replying to the posts about reforming Islam, someone said, "Discussions criticizing Islam shouldn't be stopped just because one is afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic." That doesn't sit right with me because I believe that Islam doesn't need corrections. It's like, there's this book that is sacred and holy and it comes from God, and then some human brought a pen and wrote over it. It wouldn't be God's work anymore. Honestly, if I was sitting in a room and people start talking about ISIS, I'd back the fuck out (unless I'm in a MUN conference, of course) because that topic makes me uncomfortable. I hate it, I want it to stop, I want the people who are suffering because of them to be free and happy, but any discussions regarding ISIS would more often than not end with the conclusion that Islam is not peaceful and violent. If I sit there longer, and let them criticize Islam? Yeah, I'd die in that place. But am I adding to the problem by saying this? I can't just repeat over and over that any bad things done by Muslims in the name of Islam is just because of the bad interpretations of the Koran. But people will eventually find arguments to counter it, and then at the end of the day I will have to face the idea that maybe my faith isn't perfect at all. And I don't want to believe that, because by Good Muslim Law I should believe that my faith is first and foremost the most perfect. When I don't, am I really a Muslim at all? They pick misogyny as an example for things to criticize in Islam, and I freeze up, because I'm not well educated in that matter. I hesitate to learn about this because I'm afraid I would find the things that people say about how sexist Islam is to be true. Because the time I tried to question an Islamic Studies teacher in school about one thing that I read on the internet--that a woman should always obey to her husband's sexual needs--she said that it's really the way things should be. And then I got really angry, because hell no I have the right to say no even to my husband and any acts made against my consent should be considered rape. She got really surprised that I would think that way, and man, maybe she's always in the mood for it, but what about other women who were arranged into marriage? Who didn't have any choice but to obey? Shouldn't they have the right to reject? And that verse about how men are allowed to beat their wives--how am I supposed to stand by this? How am I supposed to say that my religion is equal with their treatment of men and women, when the mahar is meant to exchange my body for pleasure? For sex to become halal, for my body to become halal for men's consumption? I do not want to be a property. It irked me how little I know about women's rights in Islam. I know that in terms of pursuing education, men and women were the same. It was compulsory for both. But they start talking about hijab and how it's a choice, and I just kinda wince because I agree and kind of don't agree, and then it made me feel bad because I don't want to agree but I also do. I hate that a lot of sheiks use hijab as an argument to protect women from rape, but shouldn't they also tell men to not rape in the first place? Shouldn't you teach your sons about respecting women, so they don't grow up to be rapists? Why are women tasked to cover up, and men walk free? When women report misconduct, they get laughed at, jeered at, blamed for the things that they're wearing? Then why do rapes still happen in Saudi Arabia? I hate that sheiks use guilt to make us wear the hijab--fear hell, fear God, fear punishment, why not tell us what we get in turn if we wear the hijab? Why not grace us stories about jannah? And it's like a little vicious cycle. I do it all over again. Every time I open the internet, a new article comes up. Someone suggested a view that sounded reasonable but also I know to be very contradictive to what I should believe, I feel super shitty and guilty, and then I do it again until I feel physically tired. It's a scary little thing, because the more time I spend as a Muslim, the more dilemmas I face, the more questionable things I find. I keep hoping for me to find hidayah, but I don't even know even where to start, because I have strayed too far away from God to actually want hidayah, but at the same time... if somebody were to chop up my religion I'd be punching them in defense, but do I have the right to? Am I Muslim enough to say that? Or am I just simply culturally Muslim? Leftist, far right, moderate--man, I don't even know. I just want ISIS to stop being a real thing so I can go back to blogging normally about bad puns and memes.