#rejecting the main story to focus on the older relative

[manie-sans-delire-x]

My thoughts/analysis of We Need to talk about Kevin

From abnormal psych class paper:

The character I chose to analyze and diagnose is Kevin Khatchadourian from the 2011 film, We Need to Talk about Kevin. Brilliantly depicted by star Ezra Miller and various other child actors, Kevin is an angry, emotionally detached boy who struggles in his complex relationship with his mother. We see the unhealthy relationship develop between the two through-out the film as Kevin grows from a baby to a young man, ending in tragedy as Kevin achieves his ultimate revenge against his mother by massacring the rest of their family as well as several classmates in a school shooting.  

After carefully noting Kevin’s behavior and the way he and his mother Eva interact when he is a young child, I have decided to diagnose Kevin with reactive attachment disorder (RAD). The diagnostic criteria from the current Diagnostic and Statistical manual (DSM-5) for RAD reads as follows: 

A. A consistent pattern of inhibited, emotionally withdrawn behavior toward adult caregivers, manifested by both of the following: 

1. The child rarely or minimally seeks comfort when distressed. 

2. The child rarely or minimally responds to comfort when distressed. 

B. A persistent social or emotional disturbance characterized by at least two of the following: 

Minimal social and emotional responsiveness to others 

Limited positive affect 

Episodes of unexplained irritability, sadness, or fearfulness that are evident even during nonthreatening interactions with adult caregivers. 

C. The child has experienced a pattern of extremes of insufficient care as evidenced by at least one of the following: 

Social neglect or deprivation in the form of persistent lack of having basic emotional needs for comfort, stimulation, and affection met by caring adults 

Repeated changes of primary caregivers that limit opportunities to form stable attachments (e.g., frequent changes in foster care) 

Rearing in unusual settings that severely limit opportunities to form selective attachments (e.g., institutions with high child to caregiver ratios) 

D. The care in Criterion C is presumed to be responsible for the disturbed behavior in Criterion A (e.g., the disturbances in Criterion A began following the lack of adequate care in Criterion C). 

E. The criteria are not met for autism spectrum disorder. 

F. The disturbance is evident before age 5 years. 

G. The child has a developmental age of at least nine months. 

Specify if Persistent: The disorder has been present for more than 12 months. 

Specify current severity: Reactive Attachment Disorder is specified as severe when a child exhibits all symptoms of the disorder, with each symptom manifesting at relatively high levels. 

Kevin displays behavior that meets both criteria A and B. As a baby he cried constantly, reportedly even when held, showing an inability or unwillingness to be soothed. As a toddler he shows defiance, disinterest in social interaction, and a refusal to engage in play, such as when his mother is attempting to play with a ball with him and he refuses to roll the ball back or respond in any way, instead staring at her with a sullen expression. Kevin also refuses his mother’s pleas to say the word “Mommy”. As a slightly older child, Kevin continues to act defiantly and shows anger, ripping up the paper when his mother attempts to school him, immediately soiling his newly changed diapers on purpose, throwing food against the wall and onto tables, breaking his crayons, making nonsensical noises to irritate his mother, and destroying his mother’s artfully decorated room. When he is taken to the doctor to be examined, he shows no expression, does not speak, and stiffens his body. When his baby sister is born, he purposefully sprinkles water onto the newborn, causing her to cry. It should be noted however that in one instance Kevin seems to relax his cold exterior and accept comfort from his mother, shown by the scene in which he falls ill and cuddles with his mother while she reads him a story. He even apologizes for her having to clean up his throw-up. Unfortunately, as soon as he is feeling well again he is back to being rude and rejecting any attempt of hers to take care of him, refusing her help to change his clothes.  

As for criteria C, although Kevin has not experienced extreme abuse or neglect, I believe Kevin suffered from a traumatic birth as it was mentioned that his mother was resisting. His mother Eva did not desire a child, especially not one as difficult as Kevin, so she emotionally neglects him and is cold to him. Eva makes it very clear to him that he is unwanted, telling him straight to his face that she was happy before she gave birth to him and not correcting him when Kevin mentions that Eva does not like him. In one instance, she is accidentally too rough with him and breaks his arm, which Kevin later refers to as being the most honest thing she ever did. Kevin also meets the criteria of D through G, and his symptoms are persistent. I would say Kevin has moderate to severe symptoms as he does exhibit all listed symptoms quite regularly.  

I believe Kevin’s psychological problems may also have developed into conduct disorder (CD) as an adolescent and then antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) or psychopathy in adulthood, especially after taking into consideration the mutilation of his sister’s eye and the killing of his sister’s guinea pig, his father, his sister, and several classmates. He shows no guilt or empathy, appears to have shallow emotions besides anger, and shows no evidence of having affection or emotional bonds to anyone. He is also very manipulative; putting on a fake act of normalcy for his father, turning his parents against each other, and navigating the legal system to get his best outcome. However, I know that children with RAD can also be violent and if not treated, behave in a way very similar to conduct disorder in adolescence and ASPD or psychopathy in adulthood. The main reason I chose to focus on RAD over CD or ASPD is because I believe the root of Kevin’s problem is immense pain at being rejected and unloved as a child and that he harbors a deep desire to have that connection but is unable to accept affection.  He is so focused on and consumed by his anger towards his mother, while someone with true psychopathy may be more detached and indifferent. I also leaned more towards RAD given that he showed symptoms from such a young age and did not seem to have any problems outside of his issues with his mother, such as acting out in school or engaging in petty, impulsive crime. I do wish that the film showed more of his interaction with his peers. Lastly, I felt RAD was a more accurate choice because of the subtle signs of it that are associated more with RAD than CD, such as stiffening his body when others try to hug him, making nonsensical sounds, and not making eye contact as an infant, although that may not have been intentionally put in the film. Either way, his parents certainly needed to talk to professionals about Kevin when he was a child. Had they done so, perhaps they could have prevented the tragedy of both his life and the pain he inflicted on others.  

Response to tumblr ask:

I agree! I would have loved to see how he interacts at school, what he does when he’s alone and has spare time, and more of his childhood.

I think he had multiple reasons:

1- To make his mother suffer since he obviously has a lot of anger and resentment towards her

2- Because he doesn’t feel much positive emotion and gave up on ever feeling pleasure or enjoyment from regular life. Normal life is incredibly boring for him. He wanted to DO something- real, meaningful, make something happen. He wanted to Live. I very much relate.

3- He enjoys the attention he gets from it.

We talked about this in my forensic psych club- whether we should give interviews and all this attention to violent criminals. Our society is fascinated by them to the point where we make movies and books. People sell and collect memorabilia. They have fan-girls writing love letters and showing up to their court sessions, even fighting each other over them. It’s pretty crazy. But on the other hand, it’s important that we study them. Or is it? There’s a debate about everything.

4- His philosophy and world view. 

He is very nihilistic, he doesn’t believe life “means” anything and right/wrong doesn’t exist/is just a matter of opinion or viewpoint. His actions don’t really matter either, nothing does. I used to think exactly like he did when I was a teen, and I still do in a way.

As for your last question, it’s easy to forget one way of thinking when you’re in another. It’s hard to remember how one state was when you’re in a different one. Also, as shitty as outside life can be, life in prison is even shittier. Makes you appreciate the ability of choice and being able to do things, even just to walk around outside or buy an icecream cone. He was also only 15 at the time of the crime, and in the last scene he’s 18. A lot of chemical changes and neural development happens in that time. He matured- his way of thinking about himself, the world, and the others around him changed.

[lightdancer1]

Making Katara Azula's main foil is done for three main reasons:

1)Azula-centric stories don't need to center on her dynamic with Zuko even though Zuko-centric stories invariably cannot avoid his dynamic with Azula. Rejecting that her main foil and comparative sense is Zuko at all is a direct slap in the face at the Superman and Luthor vibe they have going there. Zuko's driving ambition is the desire to be king instead of the king, Azula's is to be the best Firebender of all time. Against this the best Waterbender of her generation makes a much more natural compare-contrast.

2) The obvious symbolism of their respective powers. Ice and Fire, Fire and Water, Snow vs Volcanoes (Day versus Night! Batwoman of Gotham Versus Daughter of Cal-er I'll see myself out). Fire is created from without, water has to have a source of some kind and where fire is a testament of will, water works within the world. Up to a point their personalities and narrative arcs really do mirror aspects of their powers as a subtle point that speaking of each type of Bending as a 'fourth of the human soul' ain't bullshit, it's truth.

3) I want to write stories about women that don't hinge on their relationships to any men and older brothers resenting their younger sisters is realistic but not the kind of realism I intend to use as a central narrative driving force.

Thus I put far more focus into what Katara does relative to Azula in any given world than i ever do to Zuko, because their respective friendship-family-rivalry-KHORNE CARES NOT FROM WHENCE THE BLOOD FLOWS ONLY THAT IT FLOWS dichotomy shapes each world and each story in a manner that goes well beyond Azula's family relationships.

There's also the other factor that

4) Katara has to fight to earn a status that Azula, in every AU, even her more grimdark ones, takes for granted and never has reason to doubt. Interacting with Katara gives Azula a blunt reminder that life sucking and privilege are not opposites and that in some ways she really is privileged, allowing for an exploration of privilege as an element of intersectionality and character interaction without it being artificially forced or shoehorned, and subtle enough that I hope to use it to make and deepen the points here without outright coming out and smacking the reader in the face with a herring to do it.

[livlepretre]

This is prob a weird question, but do you wonder what a ‘typical vampire’s’ relationship to religion would be like in the tvd universe if it had been explored (&I get why it wasn’t), at least upon being turned, considering that most vampires would have been brought up in eras where religion (generally) played a comparatively more serious role in everybody’s lives? I mean, how would one BEGIN to grapple or fit in this critical aspect of one’s (prior??) worldview, with rising from the dead as what’s essentially a demon, w supernatural powers & preying on humans — what would be t implications of your existence? Were the Salvatores never believers? Plus, do u have any hc on the Originals’ faiths as humans?? Were they Pagans? Christians? Or… I guess not the latter/they would have believed in the spirits as their mother was a witch..? Thoughts? (Srry if I’m bothering you with this question btw, I appreciate that you’re probably busy)

No, not bothering me, I'm very interested in the intersection between religion and vampirism.

We have to assume that religion played a huge role in the lives of MOST vampires-- secularism is relatively recent, and even then all that's happened is that older gods have been replaced with newer gods. And I can't think of any religion where rising as a vampire would be anything other than, as you say, rising as essentially a demon, a night hag, an abomination. And also, to make a blanket statement here, many religions focus a lot on the progression from life into death-- on making sense and peace of the natural order of birth, life, death (and rebirth). Vampirism breaks a person from this cycle, forever divorcing them from the natural world, the natural order. The combination of becoming that demon, of fearing themselves, and of becoming trapped in the netherspace between life and death is a horror unto itself-- one of the main reasons I find tvd vampires in particular so fascinating is because it is not just that they are truly monstrous and frightening, but that the show delves into the way the vampires horrify themselves with their own monstrosity (at least, it used to). They can only be horrified by that monstrosity if they retain some sense of what it is to be human-- and therein is the key. TVD vampires don't lose their human souls, as the vampires in BTVS do-- they simply... transmute. They're cursed with that never ending bloodlust that turns them inevitably into monsters, and they go further and further down that road until they just give in. It's a very dark curse. I'm sure there are plenty of vampires who lose faith... but there are probably even more who don't lose their faith, but instead come to accept their role as the dark mirror in opposition to life. There are a lot of really profound psychological implications to all of this.

As for the specifics of the religions of the vampires-- Damon and Stefan would have almost certainly been raised Catholics-- and I've never thought they weren't still Catholic, although, being Catholic doesn't necessarily make one devout, as with any other sect of any religion. Damon obviously crossed a lot of lines as a human. Also, the show would never have gotten into the thick of us, but how much of Stefan's guilt and shame is tied up in an understanding of the world and morality based on his religious upbringing? We can talk about Humanist ideals all we want, but I think it would be stretching credulity that someone turned as a 17 year old in the 1800s would be feeling so much shame from pure philosophical ethics and not from a sense of morality built into the religion he was brought up in. (And how do we know that Damon isn't so furious with Stefan for forcing him to turn because Stefan has essentially damned him?)

The other vampires are interesting because they're medieval people, so their worldviews would have been even more strongly intwined with religion than the Salvatores.

Katerina I've always assumed would have been Bulgarian Orthodox (you could make an argument for other religious takes based on the Travelers-- but that came later and I tend to just blot that all out of my memory because frankly I think making Katherine exceptional at all other than as the doppelganger is stupid and actually robs her story of tragedy-- it's tragic for her to just be living her normal life and losing her baby the way she did and then to discover that no, she has this dark fate she had no idea about-- it's somehow less tragic if she also is from a family with superpowers and her daughter just gets vamped to track her down) -- nothing much to this other than that is a likely choice. Although I have ALWAYS wondered about Katerina's life in Bulgaria, since it was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time and of course, the show has no interest in history so there's nothing that even touches on this potentially fascinating detail.

Okay the Originals. I have a special place of loathing in my heart for the Viking!backstory and have basically decided to whole heartedly reject it. I think Elijah's "my father was a landowner in Eastern Europe" story was much more convincing and likely. I prefer the idea of Russian!Originals, for various reasons I've documented here on this blog, so I think they would also be Orthodox Christians. (But: potentially before the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches? so perhaps they wouldn't really think of themselves as "orthodox," or perhaps they later started to think of themselves this way.) The Orthodox Christian thing also ties into Tatia Petrova, whose descendants I headcanon as Orthodox. (I'm also fond of the idea that the Originals were Jewish, or the idea that Esther was Jewish.) There are a lot of mystic arts buried in religious arcana, so I don't see there being a conflict between Esther's witchcraft and simultaneously practicing a religion. I think in a medieval context, framing the world in terms of religion would have been just so inevitable, so tied in to every other element of life. It's actually fascinating to consider what hold overs of this thinking medieval vampires would have. (And I think of the Originals as deeply medieval in outlook, in ways in which they are largely unaware)

At any rate, the Originals are by far the most monstrous of the vampires, and the ones that have slipped the furthest from their humanity. I wonder in what ways they developed such horrific tastes as a means of spitting in the eye of their faith? If some of their differences could pertain to who held on to faith (Finn) vs. who felt most abandoned by it (Klaus)? Food for thought!

[syncogon]

[QZGS TL] Butterfly Blue’s interview regarding the movie For the Glory (08/15/19)

Because the movie was released (and English subbed) online fairly recently, I thought I’d go back and translate this interview that BB did about it. It’s pretty long, but quite interesting! (As always, please let me know of any errors.)

bilibili interview link (remove spaces): https ://www.bilibili. com/video/av63863201/

Q: As this is the first movie of TKA, how did you choose the topic? A: We’ve already done a donghua, which already covers the plot of the main novel, so when we were picking the subject of the movie, we didn’t want to repeat a story that we’ve already told. I’d written some side stories [i.e. the prequel] earlier, which fills in a few stories of our characters during the ten years before the main story starts. So, we wanted to use the movie medium to help fill in the early stories or whatnot of our characters, so everyone can have a better understanding of these characters. Especially for people who might be curious about The King’s Avatar, or who might not have even heard of it before – if they watch our movie first, they’ll start from the very beginning and watch as these youths, with Ye Xiu as the focus, grow.

Q: When you were writing TKA, had you ever thought about Excellent Era’s Season 1 roster? A: Of the characters, only one was mentioned in the novel, that’s Wu Xuefeng, who was a most reliable helper at Ye Xiu’s side during the first years he won those championships. As for the others, in terms of characters, I hadn’t really thought about them when I was writing the main novel, because by that time in the story they’d all retired or they weren’t relevant to our main plot. But back then, because they were a team, players on a team all had their own accounts, and everyone’s accounts had a class. The classes were actually always maintained, Excellent Era had always passed them down. So, when we were making this movie, we maintained all of this. That is, every original character in the movie, the accounts they used, you’ll find that those IDs appear in the main novel – Excellent Era’s Elementalist, Spellblade, etc, they are all these same account IDs.

Q: Why was the first user of Peaceful Hermit changed from Guo Mingyu to Lu Liang? A: Oh, this is a bit awkward. While I was writing, I forgot, the one who I initially had – well I forget which it was but – anyway, I wrote two different first-generation users, so basically it was actually a mistake in writing, a bug. Then, in the movie, they helped me patch it up, so by using a plot point they were able to fix this mistake in the original that I could no longer go back and change myself, they were able to cover my error. So, we have two users, and between them they have a relationship of partnership and inheritance.

Q: Given that we already know that Excellent Era wins the Season 1 championship, how does the movie make matches more interesting and exciting? A: For this, we basically started from Excellent Era’s opponents at the time, Royal Style as a team. Following the original work, Ye Xiu had met a few friends in-game, and then under the support of an internet café boss, the eventual boss of Excellent Era, Tao Xuan, they formed a team. Their team was fairly grassroots. But we considered the world background as a whole, and Glory definitely wasn’t the only game, nor the only competitive esport. So under our understanding, in this profession, there are a number of professional teams, but Ye Xiu and the others aren’t a part of all this. In contrast, Royal Style is a professional team, but at the start, Glory wasn’t one of the games they played professionally. But after the Glory Pro League was established, the professional club Royal Style decided to create this kind of team to play in the Glory Pro League. So, compared to Ye Xiu and co’s background, Royal Style is more “professional,” more advanced along the professional path, they have professional systems or training methods, that’s the kind of team they are. And then, compared to Ye Xiu and the rest of them, Royal Style might be more cohesive, more powerful, with better training and logistical support backing them up. We hope that Ye Xiu can encounter such a powerful foe, so everyone can see how Ye Xiu was able to stand upon the summit of Glory in Season 1.

Q: When Ye Qiu gave the mask to Ye Xiu, was that because something changed about his attitude? A: From the fact that he brought the mask prepared to give to him, we can see that Ye Qiu’s attitude didn’t actually change. In their hearts, the two brothers understand each other. Ye Qiu knew that even if he came over here to find his brother, there was no way he would be able to bring his older brother back. So when he said you should go home etc etc, that was more just fulfilling his duties as the younger brother, or like this is a job the family gave me, but after he did that he immediately gave him the mask; he knew things would end up like this, there’s no way you’re coming back. But he also knew where his older brother’s qualms lay, or the things that would be inconvenient for him, so this mask demonstrates his understanding of and consideration toward Ye Xiu.

Q: What was the biggest pleasant surprise of this movie for you? A: For me, the biggest surprise was this one scene – so after Su Muqiu died, he left his account card to Su Mucheng, and during this time Su Mucheng was feeling very downhearted, and she kind of rejected this game. But then one day, she took this account card that her brother left her, and when she logged on, Dancing Rain’s avatar appeared, and the avatar said to her, something like, “did you miss me? I’m always here.” That moment was the most moving part of the movie for me, because when we were making this movie, we were really trying to let it have more positive energy, so we tried to focus on the esports and competitive spirit side of things. But in this moment, I saw the significance that ordinary games have in our lives. It doesn’t have to do with dreams or fighting spirit, but they enter our lives and bring to you thoughts and memories.

Q: Say something to the TKA fans on Bilibili! A: The fans on Bilibili are probably mostly those who watched the donghua, right, so I feel that, come watch our movie as well, see if you like it. Thank you everyone for your support all this time.  

(reading Weibo posts) “2019 June 16, I wrote down in my planner that on August 16 I had to go to the movie theater. 2019 July 16, I tragically received notice that my school’s military training was on August 16…” Well, August 16 is just the release date, we’ll be in theaters for a while after, you can just go later haha

“I saw Tao Xuan in the trailer. At that time, they were all going to the pro circle for their dreams, for their own Glory!! And now, Excellent Era’s things are still here but the people are no more…” This user is sighing emotionally about Tao Xuan. But even if Tao Xuan changed later, earning money is still a dream, we can’t think that just because of this he’s all that… it’s just that the road he took is different from Ye Xiu’s.

“Guo Mingyu, you think that just by changing your name you can get away from your debt?” [laughing] That’s my mistake!

“Zhang Jiale perfectly avoided all chances of appearance.” He actually does appear, everyone look closely!

“This TKA movie you speak of, is it a good watch?” [bb misspeaks at first lol: “quan zhi dian ying gao shou,” all-class movie expert] Of course it’s good, you’ll know when you see it!

Q: Why does Ye Xiu go on morning runs in the movie? Probably because we still wanted to have a movie with more positive energy, let him maintain a relatively healthy physical condition. After all, by the time we see him in the main novel he’s a 25-year-old player, and by the time he wins the championship again he’s already 27-28. For an esports player, that’s extremely old, but even at such an old age he could still maintain that good of a competitive condition. If we wrote that off as natural gift, that doesn’t seem very suitable, so when we were writing this prequel, we wanted to have an explanation for why even when Ye Xiu became so old and many people had already retired, he could maintain such a high competitive skill level. It’s because he had a foundation in taking care of his body.

Q: Why was Su Muqiu so focused on self-made weapons? A: Because he relied on gaming to raise his little sister, his family, so in my original design, the most fundamental reason he focused on Silver weapons was that it was profitable. He needed greater income or whatnot, so after he discovered that this game had these Silver weapons, his thoughts would go in that direction. Because we have a saying in-universe, “the strongest weapons are Silver weapons,” so this had the greatest utility for him, it was a very down-to-earth judgment, it was an opportunity that would provide the greatest payoff, so he put a lot of effort into this area. To be honest, I feel like his goals are almost a level above the later dreams and “for the championship,” because he was doing this for existence, for life, for his home, for his little sister. So, when he’s going all out for this, it’s closer to our real lives, closer to an ordinary person’s attitude.

Q: Why does One Autumn Leaf get long golden hair in the trailer? A: That was his Awakening skill during the finals match. In the novel, we can use words to describe how awesome something is, but this kind of scene in an animation, we want to visually show a character transformation, something that will immediately make people know, “the One Autumn Leaf in this moment is stronger,” let everyone perceive this feeling more directly. So, we made him enter this long golden hair, cooler and more dazzling state.

Q: When Ye Xiu was still the little captain, what was his guiding principle for leading Excellent Era? A: This is actually the story we tell in the movie, how he led the team in the beginning, and then how he established those “golden phrases” or “fundamental creeds,” of his, such as what might be his most famous “Glory isn’t a single-player game,” in the movie we can see how this statement became Ye Xiu’s core spirit. And then in the finals, we use that kind of battle to show how his teammates supported him until the very end, how he relied upon the help of every one of his teammates to defeat the opposing Royal Style, which was a powerful team with top-level pro players.

Q: What function did Wu Xuefeng serve in the team, as Excellent Era’s vice-captain? A: Mm, to me, Wu Xuefeng this person, he’s a bit older than Ye Xiu and the others. When Ye Xiu became the little captain, he was barely an adult, only 18 years old, and in comparison, Wu Xuefeng was more mature, more stable. On the team at the time, I feel that he was in a steadier condition than Ye Xiu was. At that time, Ye Xiu was still young, he could be impulsive, he could be volatile. But Wu Xuefeng, at his side, was a very reliable character, he was the godly needle that stabilized the ocean [i.e. in Journey to the West, the pillar in the ocean that Sun Wukong took to serve as his iconic weapon]. Whenever problems appeared in the team, he would be the one mediating, he would be more rational, he would be a more balanced and steady character. I feel that he was a very good vice-captain at the time. Ye Xiu’s most reliable helper, that was how we defined him.

Q: What was the turning point for Ye Xiu when he decided he wanted to become a pro player? A: Well, first, when he left home, he didn’t have a very clear goal in mind. His family didn’t want him to play games, so he wanted to come out and play some games. And then he met Su Muqiu and Su Mucheng, and they were together for a while. At first, I feel like his life state was pretty similar to Su Muqiu’s, he would just do some power-leveling or some other very ordinary things just to earn a living, he didn’t have a clear plan. But the turning point was when Glory this game appeared, it was like Su Muqiu discovering Silver weapons in this game. After seeing the complexity of this game, how widespread it was, the things that this game was establishing, as well as his own ability and skill with this game, I feel that it was a gradual, step-by-step process and he decided, or wanted to try, “can I become a pro player.” And he had partners beside him, partners like Su Muqiu, and his boss at the time Tao Xuan, and a few good friends in-game, and everyone began to come together on this tide, this opportunity was here, and so with everyone he successfully stepped onto this road – and never looked back.

[harostar]

SNK feels and rambling

So between this month’s chapter, the repeated focus throughout these last two arcs, and the preview of the Final Panel.....

Time for some feels, thoughts, and theories.

I think things have truly come full circle, with the series ultimately focusing on the idea about the world we leave behind for our children. Beyond the larger international questions about the world, it strikes a chord because Japan has struggled with an aging population and lower birth rates. We have it taken to its most extreme with Zeke’s ultimate goal of Euthanasia, arguing that it is better not to bring children into a doomed world.

Viewing the series as a larger whole, it truly has been about Generational baggage and what we leave behind for the next to follow in our footsteps. Our main trio were introduced as children, and we followed the 104th through their training days and slow introduction to the world as fully-fledged soldiers. Theirs was a generation of Innocence Lost, being thrown straight on to the frontlines as their world changed dramatically. 

We have, over the course of the series, lost the Veterans slowly one by one. This ultimately results in the death of Erwin, with Armin and Jean struggling to pick up as strategists and leaders. Now only Hange and Levi remain of that older generation. 

The Uprising Arc saw the old government overthrown, with the bastard child Historica slaying her father to take the throne. Her focus has been on the children that were forgotten, as she once was. Historia is now poised to become a mother. 

Mikasa saves a child in Trost, much as she herself was saved as a child. Sasha saves a little girl when she returns home as a soldier. 

Eren learns that he killed his father, inheriting the Titan’s power and the burden of being a Savior for Paradis. 

Our children, the 104th, are now the Adults of the story. They are the veterans making the decisions and shaping world history and policy. Everything is in their hands now. 

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the toxic nature of the Warrior program. Children offered up by their families, symbolically and in some cases literally cutting off their bloodlines. The Galliard, Leonhart, Hoover, and Grice families as well as Pieck’s family are all seemingly condemned to die out. The children have been sacrificed, and no one will be left to carry on their families when the Curse of Ymir takes them. The Brauns are eager to similarly give up their children, with only the one unnamed cousin possibly living to carry on their clan.

The Tyburs have been wiped out. All that remains of the old-world Fritz line is Zeke, who intends to wipe out his entire race. 

I think it is no accident that our time skip started out with the children. The first person we meet is Falco Grice, a child with dreams that is burdened by the sins of his uncle. Both Grice brothers are Warrior Candidates, ending their bloodline to protect their older relatives. Falco and Colt both see the flaw in this system. We meet Gabi, the second Braun being offered up as a sacrifice to Marley’s war machine. And we see an adult Reiner, burdened with his sins and desperate to save the next generation.

The sins of Grisha are echoed in his two sons, children burdened by his obsession and his rage. Doomed by his selfishness and headed rapidly towards a very ugly end. One wishes for oblivion and an end to his people. The other has been burning every single bridge and may be intending Genocide to save his little island. 

When confronted with the killer of his daughter, Mr. Braus rejects the idea of revenge. He points to the cruelty of nature, and the responsibility of adults to care for children and to NEVER leave their burdens to the next generation. He refuses to harm Gabi, because she is a child. Because Sasha was an adult and a soldier that understood that “going into the forest” meant risking her life. He takes the pain and the anger and he refuses to allow Gabi and Kaya to take them on. 

Mikasa protects Gabi, because she is a child. The 104th help Gabi and Falco because they are children forced into something much bigger than themselves. 

Nile broke his promise to follow Erwin, in order to have a family. In these dark times, facing his possible transformation into a mindless Titan, he thinks of the things he wishes to tell his children. He saves Falco and takes him back to his friends, telling all three that children have no business on a battlefield. He saves children because that is the duty of adults.

Armin’s introduction to the true horror of the Colossal Titan’s power is seeing a dead child in the rubble. Mikasa chastises Eren with tears in her eyes, pointing out the children he has willingly murdered. Sasha dies because she refused to shoot a child. Jean’s actions are left ambiguous when faced with killing a child to get to an enemy. 

The final panel of the series, as revealing in the preview, is a baby being held and told they are free. It is ambiguous for now, but nods to the larger themes discussed above. The ultimate idea of the future, of creating a world for the next generation, of how having children is the ultimate refusal to give into despair.

The Survey Corps dies on the hope that others will pick up where they left off. Erwin uses this as inspiration before his final, deadly charge. The next generation will be the ones to make our lives matter. The Survey Corps survives and dies on Hope, moving forward because others will take their place. 

The Warriors live in despair, because there is no future for them. The centuries of Eldian inheritance cycles involve the child consuming the adult, dooming themselves to a shortened life and brutal death at the hands of a successor. Historia defies this cycle, and refuses to carry on her family’s tradition. Grisha chooses to doom both of his sons, using the first as a tool for his revolution and then refusing to entrust his Titan to anyone but his 10-year old son. 

Our seemingly-ultimate Villain is a man that believes salvation comes from Death. His ultimate goal is to sterilize an entire people, committing a slow kind of genocide. Dooming the current generation to living out their final days without hope of a future. 

Now we have  Onyankopon and Armin discuss how Zeke’s Euthanasia plan renders years of hard work pointless. Without children, there is no point. Without a future, their struggle becomes meaningless.

I think it is no accident that the first chapter is titled: “To you, in 2000 years”. 

We are approaching the 2000 year mark of Eldian history. 

Ymir Fritz is witnessed in the Paths as a girl, not the Goddess or the Devil of myth. 

The story begins with a child. It starts again after a 4 year skip, again with another child. And it apparently ends with a child.

At its core, this is a story not of Giant man-eating monsters. But one of humanity and the necessity of leaving a better world for the next generation. One of recognizing that our petty conflicts and selfishness should die with us, instead of becoming the burden of our children and their children. 

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Neir

Our next aro-spec creator is Neir, introducing eir work to the world as R. Tally, better known here on Tumblr as @tallyrunning​.

Neir is an asexual, aroflux and genderqueer person demonstrating the diversity of talent amongst aro-specs in poetry, fiction and musical composition. You can find eir classical and ambient music on Soundcloud and eir writing on Wattpad and Booksie, encompassing an eclectic mix of literary fiction, autobiography, LGBTQ+ fiction and short stories. If you have a dollar or two you’re wanting to invest in worthy aro-spec talent, please investigate eir Ko-fi!

With us Neir talks about identity and connection to other people, composing non-romantic musical pieces, the fear of misinterpretation by alloromantics and the challenge of finding an audience for non-romantic works. Eir words encapsulate a passion for challenging alloromantic norms and celebrating unique creativity, so please let’s give em all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aroflux and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

My aro realization was fairly quiet, and it came much later than I think I logically would have expected it to, had I known it would. It was easy to figure out that I was asexual; sex has always made me very uncomfortable, and as I grew older I realized that it wasn’t immaturity that was causing my repulsion, but just lack of attraction. It didn’t make sense to engage in something I didn’t want to do with someone I didn’t want to do it with. I also had an ace friend at the time, so the vocabulary came easily to me.

My aro realization came much later, around halfway through university (not more than two years ago). A friend of mine whose feelings with regards romance I strongly shared got a boyfriend, and I became confused because if even she could feel romantic attraction, and we were so similar, why couldn’t I?

I am a touchy-feely person who loves hand-holding and hugs, so for the longest time I thought my strong love for my friends (and potential friends - notorious feelings called ‘squishes’ I couldn’t name at the time) had to be romantic. I honestly just did a lot of internet research and stirring in my own head until I woke up one day and just went, “romance is a sham, I don’t understand it and I don’t want it.” The -flux part of my identity is something I recently started using to label my vastly differing moods and feelings day-to-day regarding platonic attraction. Some days I love people and being close to others; other days I want nothing to do with anyone and am cold as ice.

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I’ve always been someone who lives in my own world, partly because I find the real world confusing and difficult to navigate at times. I’ve written stories and poems ever since I could pick up a writing utensil, and they were always for myself. They were a way to write what I wanted to see in fiction; I would only realize in adulthood that I did this so much because I didn’t see a lot of me or things I could relate to. It’s recently that I’ve come out of my shell and decided to share my works. I always love reading others’ stories, so who knows? Maybe someone else feels just like I did as a child and needs some representation and good ol’ escapism.

As for music, I grew up listening to the same-sounding romantic love songs over and over again, and I began to get very annoyed with the topic. I think romance is great for other people, but the amount it was advertised felt nauseating. I couldn’t understand why it was so important. Similarly, when I took creative analysis courses in my post-secondary studies, professors would often talk about how certain motifs and instruments evoke romantic love by default. I now make it a mission to compose lyrics and instrumental pieces that are non-romantic.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

I often purposely avoid writing romance in my works (this may seem funny, since I’m currently writing a romance novel as an exercise). I focus on other themes I really enjoy reading about, such as ambiguity in social dynamics, mental health, and wonder. Even in my music, I find that I write many ambiguous-sounding or discomforting pieces (to the Western ear) in my attempts to avoid 'romantic’ instruments and motifs but still convey emotion.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

I always fear that when I don’t explicitly state my intentions in writing something non-romantic, people will still find a way to see romance. This goes for my written work (fiction and poetry) as well as my musical compositions. I carry a lot of wonder for the world around me, and that expression of love may be (and has been) misinterpreted. In addition, I fear that no one likes to read things that don’t have romance. This seems to be a common fear, even for non-aro writers. I make relationships a big priority in my fictional work, but if there isn’t anything romantic, my stories seem to be left in the dust.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I’m a pretty quiet person who is relatively happy with my orientation(s). I haven’t experienced a lot of rejection of my identity, although it should be said that I am not publicly out. I also get easily overwhelmed with people. I frequent Arocalypse, and love that it’s a small community, for example (in general, I like that the aro community is small and palatable). At the moment, I connect minimally and am happy with that. Maybe it will change in the future when I am more publicly out.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

I would love for people to talk about my work! Whether that means likes, shares, criticism, comments, headcanons, questions, whatever! I’m not the greatest at self-promotion, and sometimes I feel like I am yelling to the wind and am the only one excited about art, so any and all help or validation would be appreciated.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

My current baby is a fictional story called The Charlatan. I still haven’t figured out what its genre is exactly, but it’s got elements of adventure and heavily focuses on personal and interpersonal character development. The main character of this book is an aromantic asexual, and every main cast member after her is LGBTQ+. (Note: one of these characters is an aromantic bisexual – I feel that non-ace aros aren’t represented much so I was quite happy when this label fit the character.) The story centers around the main character’s attempts to deal with being cheated by her home country, impending war, and learning to ally with others to achieve redemption. You can find The Charlatan on my Wattpad or Booksie pages!

[joemerl]

“A Swiftly Tilting Planet” is Awful and I Hate It

I don’t know if anybody cares about my opinions, but I built up a lot of bile reading this book and I have to get rid of it somehow.

Background

For those who don’t know, this is the third book in Madeline L’Engle’s Time Quintet, aka “A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels that you’ve never heard of before.” The series involves a family that goes on Science Fantasy-type adventures with beings sent from a vaguely-defined, vaguely Christian bureaucracy of magical aliens. I’ll discuss the previous books a bit, but the series is pretty episodic so we don’t really need to recap them. 

In this story, the world is about to end because a South American dictator has a nuke. Our protagonist, the psychic teenager Charles Wallace, must work with a time-traveling winged unicorn from space to prevent this catastrophe by entering the minds of people from the past. It is much less interesting than it sounds.

Spoilers to follow.

These One-Dimensional Characters Keep Giving Birth to Themselves Like a Flock of Infuriatingly Dull Phoenixes 

The main plot has Charles Wallace travel to ca. 1170, ca. 1693 (Salem Witch Trials), ca. 1865 and ca. 1930s (or whenever Mrs. O’Keefe would have been a kid), plus the then-present day of 1978. Along the way, he chronicles the histories of several families, which include, by my count, about 30 characters who have only half a dozen different names and two personalities between them. 

The Maddox-Llawcaes: Technically two families, but they keep intermarrying each other to the point where I’m seriously questioning how inbred their modern descendants must be. This family was founded by a bunch of cliché Native Americans (stoic, wise, and otherwise devoid of personality) who married some woke Welshmen, repeatedly over multiple generations. They’re good. 

Gwydyr and his descendants: Distant relatives of the above, but descended from their patriarch’s ~evil~ brother. They’re evil and lust after virtuous Maddox-Llawcae women.

The Mortmains: They’re evil and lust after virtuous Maddox-Llawcae women.

The O’Keefes: They’re evil and lust after virtuous Maddox-Llawcae women. Also, they seem to hate disabled people. 

This is arguably a sex-linked trait; the one female character from an “evil” family seems relatively alright, but when she marries a Maddox-Llawcae she still passes evil on to their descendants. This turns out to be the driving crux of this story: Charles Wallace learns that the dictator is descended from that couple and was corrupted by his ancestress’ ~evil~ genes. To avert the apocalypse, Charles Wallace has to change history so that the Maddox-Llawcae man marries a Maddox-Llawcae woman instead. 

It’s pretty much impossible to interpret this as being about upbringing; it’s about blood. "Gwydyr’s line is tainted,” Charles Wallace says near the end. “There is nothing left but pride and greed for power and revenge.” At another point, a Maddox-Llawcae immediately writes off his unborn half-brother as evil because he has a Mortmain father. And he’s right---Unnamed Mortmain Sibling grows up to be a criminal and dies in jail. Hopefully without managing to pass on his dirty, inferior genes first, amirite? 

It doesn’t help that, even separated by centuries, relatives are often described as looking alike and/or having variations of the same names. Of those 30ish characters in these families we have three Mad(d)o(c)(k)/Madogs, two Gwydyrs, five Rich/Ritchie/Richards, three Bran(don)s, two Matt(hew)s, two Duthbert Mortmains (yeah, because that’s a name you want to keep in circulation for 300 years), and most egregiously of all, four of the main female characters are Zyll, Zylle, Zillah and Zillie. (Technically there are three Zillahs, if you count middle names.)

Obviously, genetic determinism is a questionable moral. It’s also really annoying, because each time period has the same basic characters just going through a variant of the same plot. There is hardly any character development across 800 years of history, and no permanent change from good to bad or vice versa.

In a way, this even ruins the previous books---Calvin O’Keefe became a good guy despite his dysfunctional family, but now I get the feeling that this isn’t supposed to be a testament to his strength as a person, it was just his mom’s Good Maddox Genes breaking through the Evil O’Keefe Heritage. But hey, the focus on Mom O’Keefe was nice in this book, since she’s practically the only one who has an actual character arc. 

Though, as you’ll see below, she was not actually needed for this story at all.

This Universe Has No God, Just a Tyrannical Plot Outline

Charles Wallace is the protagonist of this story, but probably gets mentioned on fewer than half of its pages. Mostly, he’s just psychically possessing people, during which time he does not control them so much as see their lives and...vaguely influence them, sometimes. What I’m saying is, he doesn’t really do much in this story. His grand moment, in the penultimate chapter, is to vaguely influence Matthew Maddox #1 to vaguely influence Rich Llawcae #3 to not to get stabbed by Gwydyr #2. This saves the world, but seems somewhat anticlimactic after 287 pages of build-up.

What’s worse: he actually tried to make this story shorter, and save me so much suffering. Unfortunately, “God” wouldn’t let him. At least, for a certain sense of the word. 

The Time Quintet is sort of like Chronicles of Narnia in that it’s a Christian story, but you have to dig a little beneath the surface to realize that. L’Engle’s beliefs were also more liberal than Lewis’, and in this book they seem almost pantheistic: Charles Wallace’s help seems to come less from a personal deity and more from a sort of implied sentience of the universe itself. This usually comes in the form of “the wind,” which blows him and the unicorn to different time periods at its own whim. 

Charles Wallace’s arc is that he is apparently a control freak, and needs to trust God/the universe to lead him, or something. He figures out early on that the key to everything is in 1865, but the unicorn says that no, we have to let the wind blow us where it wants. Twice he tries to fast-track things, and each time he and the unicorn almost die as a result; thus he learns that no, he should not be relying on his own intelligence or logic, he should just ~go with the flow~ and assume that things will work out. 

So basically, Charles Wallace has been tasked by Vague God to prevent the apocalypse, but he’s not allowed to do anything to actually try to prevent it---he’s basically just pushed into random corners and told to stay quiet, with the hope that his presence will change history through osmosis. I find myself comparing this to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. While I have some criticisms of this subplot, in that book Harry is presented with a choice: do what he thinks will save the world (looking into the Deathly Hallows), or what the Omniscient God Stand-In says will work (finding Voldemort’s Horcruxes). That works well enough, but here, Charles Wallace is given the choice between his own ideas and no actual instructions. He’s told to save the world, and then criticized for trying. 

There’s a part where the Echthroi (demons who want the nuclear apocalypse to happen) try to trick Charles Wallace by preying on his ego. This involves telling him he was selected to save the world because he’s intelligent and psychic and is a generally moral person, all of which is true. He rejects this, as he is supposed to, and at the end of the book notes that the mission did not succeed “because I was intelligent, or brave, or in control,” but because he let the wind guide him. Which just leads me to wonder why he was the one chosen to save humanity, when Vague God could have sent anyone else, or just cut out the middle-man and had a unicorn tell Bran Maddox #3 whom he was supposed to marry. 

But what really makes this intolerable? Charles Wallace was right. The key to everything is in 1865, he eventually gets blown there anyway, and it’s the only place where he concretely needed to do anything. So why the hell did we need 40 awful pages set during the Salem Witch Trials?! To teach us that the Salem Witch Trials were bad? Even the whole part in ca. 1930s was pointless---the only plot-relevant thing that we got there were hints about 1865′s importance, which Charles Wallace had already figured out but was scolded for suggesting. Other than that, these sections were just used to hammer in the idea that Maddox-Llawcaes are always good and the other families are always evil. 

So, my rewrite: Charles Wallace goes to 1170 and sees Madoc and Gwydyr. Then he either a.) figures out the importance of 1865 with his family’s help, as he does in the book, or b.) goes to the 1930s and figures things out from the clues there, while also learning the fairly-interesting-but-technically-irrelevant backstory about Mrs. O’Keefe. Either way, he decides to go to 1865, thus justifying his role as protagonist, and the fact that he is actively trying to save the world is not treated as a moral failing. 

Comparisons to the Previous Books, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love at Bombs

This is my third Madeline L’Engle book, and really, these problems were present in the first two, even if they were less pronounced. Both ended with the protagonist (Charles Wallace’s older sister Meg, who arguably is more important than him in this book, too) saving the day with the Power of Love---meaning that she didn’t so much do anything as feel a certain way. Here, Charles Wallace does even less, just watching other people fall in love while his own character arc is in opposition to the actual plot. 

L’Engle’s strength does not seem to be coherent stories or complex characterization so much as weird, cool ideas---for example, a time-traveling space unicorn. But compared to previous books, this one is pretty down-to-earth; after hitching a ride on said unicorn, Charles Wallace mostly just watches people live fairly typical lives. While A Wrinkle in Time’s villain, a demonic alien brain, could theoretically wither at the approach of a sibling’s love, it’s harder to imagine a nuclear war being averted by nothing more than some shoehorned character development. 

For the record, I bought the fourth Time Quintet book at the same time as this one. I really, really hope that it’s better, but it will probably be a while before I get to it. 

Other Nitpicks

The whole clue leading to 1865 involves a book written by Matthew Maddox #1, who’s from that time. It’s about time-traveling unicorns and family feuds and the like, the basic idea being that he witnesses Charles Wallace and all the supernatural happenings and writes it down as a novel. Fine, okay, but people who talk about this novel keep emphasizing how revolutionary and amazing it was, which kind of feels like L’Engle just patting herself on the back for this awful, awful story.

At the end of the book, the time-traveling unicorn erases the memories of Charles Wallace and his sister Meg, for...some reason? I honestly don’t know why he did this; the pair knew about supernatural creatures even before this book, and they can still half-remember what happened anyway, so this seems pretty pointless. 

This line, from the 1865 arc: “When the sons of men fight against each other in hardness of heart, why should God not withdraw? Slavery is evil, God knows, but war is evil, too, evil, evil.” Not a bad point, but juxtaposed to the characters’ passivity I can’t help but snark: “Yeah, why can’t people just love at each other and magically fix everything, right?”

I’m Tough But Fair: Some Good Points

There are time-traveling winged unicorns from space. They eat moonlight, drink starlight, and hatch from eggs, as we see on a brief trip to their home planet. So yeah, L’Engle is pretty good at Science Fantasy weirdness.

Honestly, the other filler chapters were pretty good too, if only because they distract from the annoying main story. Even the purple prose about “the harmonies of the universe” are alright sometimes. 

Like I said, Mrs. O’Keefe could have been cut, but her arc, going from innocent little girl to crotchety old lady to redeemed old lady, was a good one. And her brother being named “Chuck,” like Charles Wallace, actually felt like it meant something instead of being yet another case of Generation Xerox. 

Along those lines, I like that the Murrays didn’t turn out to be some distant cousins of the Maddox-Llawcaes. That would have been annoying.

The 1865 arc was easily the best in the book. Even with the blood-based moral alignments, the characters still had actual arcs about overcoming disabilities, PTSD...like, expand this and cut out the stupid Salem Witch Trial arc, which was so, so bad. Also, was I just imagining it, or was Matthew #1 in love with Zillah #1? ‘Cause him arranging for her to marry Bran #3 is even more touching if he did. 

Conclusion

Um...the book sucked. 

I wrote this over three days, and it wound up being more than 2,200 words. Wow.

[mst3kproject]

509: The Girl in Lover’s Lane

           This is a movie about drifters, which works, because the story just kind of drifts.

           A kid named Danny has decided to run away from home and be a hobo in order to make his parents sorry for getting a divorce.  He’s inexperienced at hoboing, so finds an older, more experienced hobo named Biggs, who promises to show him the ropes of hobohood in return for Danny paying all his bills.  The pair stop in a town called Sherman, where Biggs falls in love with Carrie the waitress in between repeatedly saving Danny from his own stupidity.  Just when Biggs is on the verge of throwing in the hobo towel and settling down, Carrie is murdered and the town decides her boyfriend must’ve done it, despite the guy with the big neon STALKER! sign over his head who’s been hanging around for the whole movie.

           When I say this movie drifts, it’s because it seems to take a while for it to make up its mind whose story this is.  The first bit, where Biggs saves Danny from some thugs at the railway yard, makes it look like we’re about to see a movie about naïve little Danny learning to survive in the big wide world.  Biggs teaches him to hitchhike, to fight, to avoid sketchy hookers, and everything else a good hobo needs to know.  Danny doesn’t get a lot of character development, though, so as long as we assume the movie is about him, stuff just seems to be happening at random.  When it finally settles down to being about Biggs, the audience has to stop and re-examine the first half to figure out what we were supposed to be paying attention to.

           I’m not going to pretend for a minute that The Girl in Lover’s Lane is anything but boring and sexist, or that it’s ending isn’t a lousy, gratuitous downer.  It does seem to have a few things to say, though, so I’m going to focus on that because it’ll be less depressing.  The biggest ‘lesson’ of this movie, the one that qualifies as the Moral of the Story and probably the one writer Joyce Heims had in mind, is that you can’t run away from your problems.

           Of three relatively main characters in this story, all of them are trying to escape from something.  Biggs had a tough childhood and doesn’t believe he’s capable of leading a normal life, so he hit the road and never looked back.  Danny loves his parents but feels overwhelmed by the emotions attendant upon their divorce, so he hopped a train.  Carrie is lonely and tired of Jesse the Stalker leering at her.  She hopes that Biggs will either take her away or else settle down with her, either offering her a way out.  At the end, Carrie’s problems catch up with her anyway, Biggs realizes that his running is a problem in itself, and Danny decides to go home and face his troubles like an adult.  They can’t be said to have lived happily ever after because this isn’t that kind of movie, but everybody gets a second chance at things.  Except of course for Carrie, because she’s dead, but she was a girl so she doesn’t count.

           This is also a movie about father-child relationships.  Biggs and Danny both have backstories that hinge on their relationships with their fathers.  Carrie’s father is a major figure in her life, both parent and employer. Biggs becomes a father figure to Danny, while one of the reasons he doesn’t want to commit to his relationship with Carrie is because her father’s drinking reminds him of his own father’s behaviour.

           Because I wasn’t sure whose story The Girl in Lover’s Lane was, it took me a while to key in on just what the relationship between Biggs and Danny was supposed to be.  A lot of MSTies find it homoerotic, as did the Brains themselves. It can be read that way, but I think it’s intended to be that of father and son.  Danny, who has purposefully left his parents, finds he still needs a guiding figure in his life, and so he latches on to Biggs.  Biggs does not initially want to take Danny in, but having done so he rises to this responsibility as best he can.  His efforts to make sure Danny doesn’t get robbed are partly selfish, in that Danny is carrying the money, but there is a protective streak in Biggs that Danny brings out.  This then extends to Carrie, whom Biggs does his best to protect from Jesse.

           The weird little interlude with the prostitute in the bathtub makes the best sense when considered in this light.  Biggs is offered a pleasurable distraction but turns it down because he needs to rescue Danny.  The placement of the scene after he’s met Carrie means it also represents the beginnings of devotion to her alone, although it’s Danny who is foremost in his mind at the moment.  It’s not as effective as it might be, since we’re left to imagine what Biggs might have done in the same situation a week ago, but it does its job.  It’s still a weird little interlude, though.  Why is the bathroom right off the foyer?  Why wasn’t the door locked?  Are customers supposed to just walk in and ‘catch’ a girl bathing as part of some weird live-out-your-fantasy scenario?

           Biggs’ backstory tells us that his father was an abusive drunk, but also that Biggs blames himself for the man’s fatal heart attack.  There is also a suggestion that the reason Biggs never stays in one place long enough to get attached to anything is because he fears that if he were to have a family, he would end up continuing the cycle of abuse. Danny is a surrogate son that Biggs can ditch at any time, so he is, in a sense, able to ‘practice’ having a family without actually committing to one.  He finds he is able to be a better father figure to this younger man than his own father was to him, and that gives him the courage to start to think about settling down.

           After Carrie’s death, Biggs finds himself confronted by her furious and grieving father, who wants nothing more than to beat the shit out of a kid he believes to be a murderer.  Biggs takes every punch and never fights back, too afraid that if he does, this man will drop dead as his own father did.  And finally, when he agrees to go home with Danny at the end, he is accepting a new father figure into his life.  Presumably Danny’s dad will help Biggs get his life together, but by now we’ve also seen Danny grow up enough that he can start offering Biggs advice, which Biggs rejects as if he is the rebellious son in the relationship.  Danny also arrives in the nick of time to save Biggs from Carrie’s father and his friends, so in a sense the tables have turned and Danny has now become a father to Biggs.

           While all this fairly complex stuff goes on with the men, Carrie herself is mere fridge meat – she’s only here so that Biggs can fall in love with her and then cry when she dies, and Tom and Crow are righteously angry about this (so angry, in fact, that they invent fanfiction!).  She does have a bit of an arc of her own, though, and it’s nice that we meet her before Biggs does and get a sense of what her world would be like without him.  She has female friends, though all we ever see her talk to them about is men.  She loves her father, but she’s vaguely discontent with her life and tired of people telling her that all her problems will be solved by the right boy.

           When the ‘right boy’ comes along, Carrie positively throws herself at him, but we’re actually given a reason why.  Part of it probably has to do with the fact that she’s been told all her life that marriage is the answer to everything, but a lot of it seems to be related to the presence of Jesse, the creepy pervert whose ‘village idiot’ status allows him to get away with things he actually does know better than. Nobody in Carrie’s life takes Jesse’s threatening presence seriously, but Biggs is willing to stand up to him, so Carrie tries desperately hard to be what Biggs will want.  She goes so far as to apologize when the dress she wears to their date doesn’t look like the one he pictured!

           Carrie’s death does tie into the themes of the movie, I guess.  I mean, Biggs tries to run away from her like he runs away from everything else, and therefore another reason he doesn’t fight back against the vigilante mob is because he really does feel like he’s responsible.  He failed to protect her when she needed him.  Carrie, too, is running away, having gone into the woods to have some privacy while she bawls her broken heart out.  The reason Danny isn’t there to help either of them is because he has, on Biggs’ advice and against his own better judgment, already left town.  Once again, running away causes everybody more problems than it solves.

           So while The Girl in Lover’s Lane is not a good movie, it is at least a unified one.  Heims and director Charles Rondeau knew how to tell a story – they just didn’t pick a very good one to tell.  That’s not always a handicap, since a gifted storyteller can turn cliché dross into literary gold in other ways.  Look at some of the contrived crap in Shakespeare!  The Bard could probably have made a plot like The Girl in Lover’s Lane into art, but nobody involved in this movie was anywhere near that level.  The technical aspects of the film are mediocre at best.  The acting is pretty unsubtle.  The lighting does its job.  The direction’s all right.  The sets are mostly okay, apart from that obvious studio set of ‘the woods’ that can only be filmed from one angle.  None of it is good enough to save the story from its own banality, and so here it is, on a screen in front of a dude and his robots.

[trecblog]

Brit(ish): On Race, Identity, And Belonging By Afua Hirsch - Review

All my life my sense of identity and belonging has never been in doubt or called into question by anyone I have met. I am a white British man. While I have grown as a person over the years, and what it means to be a white British man has changed in my mind over time that part of my identity has remained. This is a privilege that Britain does not afford most demographics. My identity, and sense of belonging is solid, for many it is more complex, and nebulous. Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch is part autobiography, part social commentary, and part exploration of the nature of identity, and belonging in Britain. Hirsch is a British born mixed-race woman with a black Ghanaian mother, and a white Jewish father. Her search to discover her own sense of identity is one which took her around the world to Senegal, Ghana, and back to Britain. This book is simultaneously deeply personal, and wide ranging in scope. It is one woman’s journey to find where she belongs, a collection of interviews with people sharing their experiences in Britain, and a look at Britain’s past, and its present as a whole.

Hirsch’s search for a place in the world where she can fit in, and the alienation she feels is the main driving force of the book. This is as much about finding where she culturally belongs as it is about geographic belonging. She describes growing up in a middle-class family and was often one of very few students of colour in school. This position, being alone in a sea of white faces continued up to her attendance at Oxford University. By her own admission she did not know much about black British culture as a result of her upbringing. She expresses feeling like she was on the outside everywhere being neither physically white enough to fit in one world, nor culturally black enough to fit in the other. Her relationship with her hair is a clear example of this dichotomy at work. Her natural hair is curled enough to defy her attempts to flatten it as a child, but the curls are not tight enough and too fine for black hairdressers’ usual treatments to work. She goes into detail about the difficulty she experienced trying to find ways to treat it, with most haircare products available for purchase not being designed with her hair in mind. Her hair is not only significant as a marker of her outsider status however. It also becomes a formative part of her culturally claiming her identity as a Black woman. Hirsch writes about when she first got her hair braided, and how things changed for her when she had a traditionally black hairstyle for the first time. She says the difference was night and day as they made her look blacker, and older. Her hair became a cultural marker signalling her as a member of the black community in a way she had not felt before. As a reader this was eye opening, revealing even something as simple as the hair growing out of my head to be yet another thing where I am relatively privileged.

The way Hirsch writes about her hair, the work it takes to care for it properly, and the reaction of others to it, is not the only way she writes about her relationship to Britain as a Black woman.  She goes deep examining Britain’s hyper sexualisation of Black people. In a notable early chapter, she details visiting the “Black Man’s Fan Club” (BMFC) which is a monthly swingers night specifically for white women who want to have sex with black men. She links this hyper sexualisation back to racist stereotypes that developed during the era of slavery and colonialism to dehumanise black people. She looks at how these myths have been used to portray black men as boogeymen coming to take the virtue of white women, and points to the treatment of the Central Park Five as an example of how these myths still cause real harm in the modern day. At the BMFC however, instead of rejecting or pushing back against these myths she finds black men who have not only embraced them with open arms but are actively reinforcing them, and a club which does not seem to understand how fetishizing black bodies this way can be offensive or racist. Hirsch also writes about the hyper-sexualisation of black women and her own experiences of this in action. She includes examples of how at just fourteen years old she had teenage boys making crude jokes about black girls supposed greater promiscuity, and sexual experience. These stereotypes and myths around the hyper sexuality of black women similarly to those about black men seem to be repeated with no consideration or awareness of their historical origins rooted in white masters raping black women slaves. This is just one example of how Britain’s reluctance to examine its past of slavery, colonisation, and empire is poisoning the well even now in the 21st century.

Hirsch is critical of Britain’s seeming refusal to look at its past with honest eyes throughout the book. Britain favouring a view of the past which extolls its fight for abolition while minimizing its role in the slave trade has contributed to a view of Britain as being a post racial society. Hirsch clearly stands opposed to this notion using her own experiences to show that the idea that Britain is “colour-blind” is a veil to hide Britain’s more subtle hidden brand of unspoken racism. The more overt instances of racism she describes such as a neighbour who would make their dog defecate directly outside her grandmother’s home every day do not receive as much focus. Instead, its things like what she terms “The Question” that seem to have left more of an impact. The Question is: where are you from? It is as an almost perfect example of the kind of micro aggression Hirsch is pushing back against. I have never been asked where I come from, but she and many others have countless times. It is presented as being just out of curiosity asked by people who will readily claim they “don’t see race”. The problem with this is when a person is asked over and over again like Hirsch has been, its ‘alienating’ and ‘othering’ effects are multiplied. The idea that Britain is some kind of post racial nation is so widespread it has come up in past reviews and is a clear source of frustration for Hirsch. It is almost a form of gas lighting on a national scale. It flat out denies the lived experiences, and racism people of colour are forced to live through every day. One example of this Hirsch writes about is at a special reception held by the Daily Mail to mark 10 years of the journalism diversity fund. A mixed-race journalist called Joseph (who Hirsch spoke to for the book) confronted some of the Daily Mail grandees present about a racist cartoon the newspaper had published. In response he was told to “stop being a troublemaker”. This myth has turned Britain into a nation with racism but no racists, where calling out racism and demanding accountability is met with denial, and labels like “troublemaker”, or “divisive”. To question and challenge this idea might make Hirsch a “troublemaker” but to paraphrase the late American politician and civil rights activist John Lewis, sometimes you need to make good trouble, necessary trouble.

To conclude this piece, good trouble as John Lewis described it is something Hirsch provides throughout the book. As her search for her own sense of identity continues, she touches upon and explores many aspects of what it means to be Black in Britain today. She always maintains her self-exploration as the emotional centre of the book so these dives into a wide range of subjects around race and identity never feel unwieldy. Her interviews with people of all walks of life are woven into the book well. They never detract from her story instead, adding more shades to it. Hirsch writes with a deft hand which is thought provoking and illuminating in equal measure. The book reviews I have written have all forced me to confront and reckon with my own privilege and position in society and this one is no exception. While it is about one woman’s journey of self-exploration it has also become an important step in my own self-exploration, and ongoing education.

[healthcare00897]

Skin Replacement Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook, and Opportunity Analysis, 2018-2026

Skin Replacement Market Introduction

Cosmetic industry has been a success story over the last few years compared to other consumer products. In cosmetic industry, skin replacement market is gaining remarkable share worldwide. The trend is attributed primarily to burn injuries and technological adoption to treat various skin-related issues. Burnt skin induces the growth of microbes and bacteria that ultimately results in rapid loss of body fluids. Thus, to protect the skin traditionally skin grafts from the donors or cadavers were used. However, uptake of these substitutes was impeded due to probability of graft rejection and unavailability of large skin patch. Hence, to resolve the problem synthetic skin substitutes came into picture to treat deep skin wounds which promotes regeneration of artificial skin. These technological advancements have led to enhanced survival of burned patients and in the past years several skin replacement products have been used for the treatment of chronic wounds. Skin replacement market is likely to grow at a relatively moderate pace in-between 2016 to 2020 before taking upward trend to 2023. The average sales is expected to go above 1.5X between 2016 and 2023.

Digital disruption along with increasing penetration of 3D printing technology is expected to drive the skin replacement market

Burn injuries have increased over the last few years. According to independent estimates, over 1.5 million population in the U.S. suffers from burn related skin loss each year. Similarly, in the United Kingdom approximately 175,000 report to emergency departments for the burn injuries and of these approximately 13,000 require hospital admissions. As a result, skin replacement product is expected to gain traction with innovative products being launched in the market including artificial skin. The industry will be further driven by increasing 3D printing technology in healthcare. Companies such as L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble leverages 3D printing technology to develop artificial skin.

Market Taxonomy:

Coherent Market Insights has segmented the skin replacement products market by

Technology

Product

On the basis of technology, 3D printing technology is expected to be the attractive segment driving huge revenue for market players.  Skin grown in laboratories will dominate the market throughout the forecast period.

Various types of skin replacement products have been divided in three major categories namely permanent skin replacement products, temporary skin replacement products and cultured epidermal skin replacement products.

North America to dominate the skin market with US$ 25 Bn spending on wound treatment and presence of over 14% geriatrics population

The skin replacement market report covers market analysis across regions – North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.

Global skin replacement market is witnessing a positive trend with North America and Europe as the main engine of growth. North America and Europe are expected to capture a major chunk of the market before easing out to Asia Pacific market by 2020.

Browse: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/ongoing-insight/skin-replacement-market-4

North America currently represents the largest regional market for skin replacement products followed by Europe. A rise in the number of burn cases has been majorly driving the skin replacement substitutes market in these two regions.

Penetration rate of skin replacement products in Asia Pacific is still at its nascent stage. However, the growth will gain upward trend by mid of forecast period. The growth will be driven by India and Japan.

Companies such as L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble leverages 3D printing technology to develop artificial skin replacement products

Some of the key players in the skin replacement market include Platelet BioGenesis, Tengion, and Cellular Dynamics International, TissueGene, Inc., Cynata Therapeutics Limited, L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble.

Companies need to emphasis on value creation by channelizing product manufacturing capability with digital marketing. Close collaboration with leading life science universities could further help companies to deliver innovative skin replacement products in the market.

Key developments

Increasing number of approvals for novel skin treatment procedures is expected to facilitate growth of the global skin replacement market over the forecast period. For instance, in September 2018, the U.S. FDA granted premarket approval for Recell (Avita), which is a spray-on treatment for burns in patients older than 18 years.

Moreover, increasing focus on research and development activities by key players is projected to drive the market growth in the future. For instance, in October 2018, Platelet BioGenesis announced that they are in the process of developing a device that imitates the conditions under which human platelets are generated, for patients recovering from injuries, surgery, or treatments like chemotherapy that can lead to an extremely low platelet count.

Moreover, in January 2019, Proctor & Gamble launched Opté, which is a tool aimed at covering skin conditions such as hyperpigmentation, and age spots by simply gliding the device over the skin’s surface. Such product innovations are likely to benefit growth of the skin replacement market.

[beesandbooks1]

Discussion: Interesting Social Commentary in The Gentleman Physician by Sally Britton

To read this post on my blog instead, click here! 

The Gentleman Physician, a summary

To begin with, lets have a potentially spoilery summary of The Gentleman Physician so you have some context. In the first book of the Branches of Love series, we are introduced to Julia Devon as a side character. She is the resigned, twenty-three year old spinster sister whose family knows only that when she had her debut in London she gravely disappointed their father and returned home unmarried. She confides in her sister that she fell in love with a man who was training to be a physician, and that man attempted to bring his suit to her father who soundly rejected him. Julia, herself, rejected him in an attempt to set him free from his love for her.

Following her sister Christine’s marriage to a man deemed unsuitable by their father, Julia is effectively banished from the Devon home in Kettering and sent to Bath to help her cousin, Virginia. Virginia’s husband is dying, attended to by Doctor Hastings–the same doctor Julia fell in love with. When reunited, the two realize they still have feelings for one another but struggle with their past, as well as prioritizing Virginia’s troubles. Most notably, Nathaniel must come to terms with Julia’s rejection of him and realize the reasons behind it had nothing to do with her own feelings.

Marriage for love versus status and money

As is often the case in a Regency romance, the main conflict of this book is the focus on love matches versus marriages of convenience. Julia had previously defied her father’s expectations of marrying for money and status, but also resigned herself to never marrying at all with the knowledge that his blessing was unlikely. In the first book, The Social Tutor, we actually meet Mr. Devon and learn just how far his ambitions for his daughters’ marriages go, so it’s unsurprising that Julia has some underlying trauma from being raised by him. All of the characters in this book, however, see marriage as ideally built on love. Virginia loves her husband very much and married him despite his status as a baron being lower than her own unmarried social status. Nathaniel’s friends, too, urge him to marry for love since as a physician with a decent income he can afford to support a wife and should choose one who makes him happy.

Hygiene in medicine

We really take for granted today that our physicians and surgeons wash their hands. This was a controversial idea when it was first introduced, but ultimately was proven to reduce the health risks to the patients. Nathaniel is very intent on this, teaching Virginia and Julia how to “properly” wash their hands when dealing with the dying baron, so as to avoid worsening his condition or transmitting his disease to anyone else in the household. I thought this was an interesting little detail to include in the story.

Discrediting women, and “hysteria”

One of the brief subplots of this novel involves Mr. Macon, the baron’s younger brother. The two brothers weren’t friendly at the beginning of the book and by all appearances it seems the two are trying to reconcile when Mr. Macon arrives unexpectedly in Bath to visit his dying older brother. However, it quickly becomes clear that Mr. Macon has nefarious purposes when he begins work to prove his own brother mentally unfit so that he can void the will. His goal is to gain custody of his two nephews, as well as the estates and money that they are heirs to. He plans to do this by demonstrating that Virginia is an unfit mother, and his brother was incorrect in naming her legal guardian of her own sons.

When this plot becomes evident, Julia immediately works against it and discusses the issue with Nathaniel, and his friend who is a solicitor. The two men explain to Julia that it’s quite common for a male relative to fight in court for custody of nephews with inheritance, and that often they win by nature of how women are regarded. Emotions and the way Virginia could potentially react in her time of grieving work against her, despite the rational characters in the plot pointing out that this is a ridiculous way to discredit a mother.

Autonomy of women

One line from this story really stuck out to me, and it was during Nathaniel’s reflections on his feelings for Julia. As they begin to reignite, he confides in close friends and slowly comes to terms with his still having feelings for the woman who rejected him. Despite this rejection, he realizes (after learning what Julia’s father is like) that as an eighteen year old woman Julia didn’t have the autonomy to accept his courtship. It takes this realization for Nathaniel to really begin to accept his feelings for Julia persist. This is a really interesting commentary on feminine autonomy in the time period, because it’s true: at eighteen, Julia was not really in the position to defy her father and marry a man whose education and career were insecure. After a few years apart, Nathaniel has completed his training and begun a career that could support himself and a wife, leaving her the option to leave her father without his permission and marry Nathaniel.

Final thoughts

This isn’t a groundbreaking look at social commentary for the time period, nor is this a great example of heavy social thought in a novel. But I did find these aspects interesting because I think they say a lot about how the author views the historical period the novel is set. There’s a lot of misconceptions out there especially about idealized and romanticized periods of history. Seeing an author take the time to give their characters views on society and hygiene that are in general agreed upon by the cast of characters was refreshing and enjoyable!

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[swipestream]

The Appeal of the Science Fiction Exploitation Movie

In a previous post, I mentioned why it’s so difficult to make good science fiction movies and why they’re rarer than studios not currently embroiled in a sex scandal.  However, there is a more effective approach which can significantly boost one’s chances of making a worthwhile and successful film in this genre.  Unsurprisingly, this is the exact opposite of what Hollywood is doing today.

I am talking about the science fiction exploitation movie.  In many ways, one can consider them the movie analogs of the pulp novel.  Free of pretension, they’re all about action and adventure.  They’re concerned with bizarre characters and scenarios, not with moralistic lessons or fancy-sounding mumbo-jumbo written by scientific illiterates who couldn’t solve a basic incline plane statics problem.  Some might deem them simple, but with movies, that’s a relative term.  Thematically, most science fiction classics are straightforward, whether it’s The Fifth Element or Blade Runner.

There is one exploitation movie most readers have seen, and it’s one they might not immediately consider as such.  Namely Mad Max and its sequel, The Road Warrior.

These two movies are violent, action-packed, and earthy, already a departure from most staid, glossy, bloodless science fiction films made since.  Note too how iconic the post-apocalyptic the world it creates is, endless parodied and copied in the decades since.  It’s filled with dirt and disorder, as opposed to the perfect cleanliness and order of big budget science fiction movies.  While the storylines are simple enough, there is tremendous imagination in the look of the mohawk-wearing punks, the reliance on gasoline in the future, and the many weird, amusing characters.  The film even features several funny moments, a vital ingredient in science fiction that is rejected by newer, more “serious” attempts.

The combination of the action, imaginative world, and iconic characters creates a successful, enduring classic.  Ask yourself if a recent science fiction movie has featured anything as cool or as memorable as the short introduction of Lord Humongous at the beginning of this clip? And it’s simply a minor scene, not even featuring the main character!

You thought I was kidding about the gimp suit, huh?

An exploitation movie, by focusing on pure entertainment, need not even have an imaginative world OR particularly iconic characters to have a measure of success.  While nowhere near as good as Mad Max, Death Race 2000 (1975) is a perfectly entertaining flick.  For those unfamiliar with the cult classic, it’s about a futuristic cross-country race whose rules are never made exactly clear, except that killing opponents and random pedestrians is a mark in one’s favor.  It’s nothing more than an excuse to feature oddball racers (including David Carradine in a black leather gimp suit as “Frankenstein”, apparently not such a departure from his real life, as we would later learn) shooting and throwing bombs at one another and pedestrians.  Despite the many imitators and an entire genre of racing games it spawned, the original still stands up well to this day.  Since it’s fast-paced, focuses on action, and is humorous and tongue-in-cheek, any deficiencies in its story or plot become less relevant, as it’s not what the movie is striving for.

An accurate depiction of most politicians, only far less monstrous.

Lastly, let’s look at a higher-budgeted, more modern science fiction exploitation movie, They Live (1988). It was a major studio release headed by one of the biggest directors in the world then, John Carpenter.  And yet, it’s still an exploitation movie at its core.  There are a pair of weird sunglasses that allows “Rowdy” Roddy Piper to see that certain humans are really horrifyingly ugly aliens.  Where the hell did these sunglasses comes from?  Where the hell did these aliens come from?  What is their goal?  Why didn’t they conquer the Earth by more conventional means?  Who knows?!  More importantly, who cares?!  Again, the focus is on the action, weird characters, and memorable scenes and situations.  And it too, despite the often gritty vibe, has many moments of the humor, including the very last image of the movie.

This is not to say that all science fiction exploitation movies are good or even entertaining.  But the chances of making another Mad Max, Death Race 2000, or They Live is much higher than that of another Planet of the Apes (1968) or Blade Runner.

Thus, for those disappointed by modern science fiction movies, I encourage one to check out some of the older exploitation films.

The Appeal of the Science Fiction Exploitation Movie published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi

[prekese1spiritum]

The 6 levels of higher consciousness

The healing you long for doesn’t come from changing anything. It comes from the ability to see and be with what is, for who you are is awareness. You are the space that your storyteller is happening in. As awareness, you can see the spells (limiting beliefs), feelings and sensations that pass through you all day long rather than being lost in the stories they generate.

When you learn how to be curious about what is going on inside of you, you discover the ability to experience what you are experiencing without turning it into a problem. You can then give the energy that was bound up in your struggles the attention and the spaciousness it needs in order to let go. This brings you back to the free-flowing aliveness that you truly are—the meadow of your being.

In order to be this curious about what is going on rather than always trying to control it, it is important to know that your life is for you. Life is not just a random series of events that happen because you did it right or you did it wrong. Instead, it is an intelligent unfolding that is revealing itself to you all day long, bringing you step-by-step from unconsciousness into a state of higher consciousness.

Take a moment now to feel how different that is from the way you usually perceive Life: as something happening to you that needs to be controlled, fixed and changed. Imagine what it would be like to let go of the whole game of resisting Life and instead to trust it. In this trust you could then open to it, listen to it, and grow from every encounter.

“Your life is a journey from unconsciousness to higher consciousness”

At the last Hawaii retreat I led on the island of Molokai, the core focus of the retreat was “All Is Welcome Here.” On the second day, one of the participants said that whenever that phrase was spoken, she heard “All is well. Come here!” When you learn how to stop trying to make your life be what you want it to be and show up for it instead (All Is Welcome Here), you discover that all is well and it is safe to be here. You can show up for the life that Life is giving you!  And when you do this you begin to shift into higher consciousness.

When Eben Alexander woke up from his seven-day coma, the first thing he said to his sister was, “All is well!” In order to open to “All Is Well” so you can truly be here for Life, it is important to recognize that the evolution which is unfolding on the Earth includes human beings. Everything is a part of this evolution, including you. You are Life evolving from unconsciousness into higher consciousness. Your life is not a random series of events. It is an intelligent and mysterious process that is for Life.

I like to call it the “flawless, methodical mystery.” It is flawless because each and every experience of your life is tailor-made to wake you up out of your unconsciousness. Also, it is truly methodical. There are basic steps we all go through on our journey out of the cloud bank of our minds back into recognition of the meadow of Life. And it is truly mysterious. Without fully understanding it, we can open to it, rediscovering what Joseph Campbell describes as “the rapture of being alive.”

The Six Levels of Consciousness

Your life is a journey from unconsciousness to higher consciousness. Michael Beckwith, minister of the Agape Church, describes this evolution in four phases. I have added two more, “Life happens in you” and “Life happens for you,” and call them the “Six Phases of Higher Consciousness.”

1. Life happens to you. 2. Life happens by you. 3. Life happens in you. 4. Life happens for you. 5. Life happens through you. 6. Life is you.

Let us take a few minutes to explore each level of consciousness. I invite you, as you read, to keep on checking in with yourself. You are being given important information in this article. Remember that the most powerful thing you can do for your healing is to have your attention and your experience together, even as you are reading this and no matter what it brings up for you.

Dip the finger of your attention into the river of your experience. Allow whatever is here to be here. You have never experienced Life quite like this and never will again. This moment in your life is unique, and it is okay exactly as it is.

Free Enlightened Living Course: Take Your Happiness, Health, Prosperity & Consciousness to the Next LevelDiscover powerful insights and techniques for creating radiant health, happiness, prosperity, peace and flow in your life and relationships.

The 1st Level of Higher Consciousness: Life Happens To You

For a good deal of your life you have probably lived like most human beings, feeling that Life is happening to you. Life is so big and if you are honest with yourself, you never really know what is going to happen next. You wake up one morning and your heart is light and happy and the next day you’re unsettled. Bosses fire you, the flu debilitates you, people you love reject you, every day you get a little older and death is always lurking around the corner.

So it is understandable that the more unconscious you are, the more often you feel like a victim to Life. When you live in the belief that Life is happening to you, you often view it as a possible threat. So you stay caught in your head, finding yourself lost in your storyteller that resists, reacts, defends and explains, hoping to figure everything out. It generally does absolutely anything except be open to Life, right here, right now.

photo: angus

The 2nd Level of Higher Consciousness: Life Happens By You

When it becomes too uncomfortable to live with this much powerlessness, you evolve into the belief that Life is happening by you. Rather than being a victim to Life, you believe you can control it. There can be a great feeling of personal power in this level of consciousness. It is a necessary step in moving out of the victimhood of the first stage of higher consciousness, but people get caught there. Men try to control women and vice versa. Religions try to control the masses. Countries try to control other countries. The majority of people try to control others who are not like them (gay, different skin color, dissimilar religions). Most of all, we try to control ourselves, hoping to make ourselves be what we think we should be.

There is an enormous amount of effort in this phase of higher consciousness. The storyteller believes that in order for anything good to happen it has to make it happen. So it loves to set goals and feels very ashamed when it doesn’t follow through (just think of New Year’s resolutions!) The storyteller eventually evolves into intentions. Goals are where you use your mind to try to make things be the way you want them. With intentions, you work with feeling what you want to generate. None of this is bad or wrong. These are important tools to use on the path of awakening and sometimes they actually work. But what would happen if you recognized that, rather than trying to make things happen, opening into Life will bring you what you most deeply long for!

“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

There is a relatively new form of control where you believe you can control your reality. In this form of control, the storyteller says that all I have to do is think the right thoughts and I can make my life be the way I want it to be. The main difficulty with this is that, in the long run, it doesn’t work. To think you can control Life is like being a cork in the ocean believing it can control the movement of the ocean. Yes, it does change the movement of the water right where it is, but it can’t influence all the other powerful forces that make up the ocean.

To stay caught in this phase of higher consciousness is to be cut off from the creative flow of Life. Believing that you are in charge of Life, you are mainly identified with your conceptual world, trying to create a reality rather than showing up for reality.

When you have lived this level of consciousness long enough, you see the downside of it. First, you find yourself becoming fearful of your thoughts: I shouldn’t be thinking this way because I will manifest this in my world. Second, it can also bring forth shame, for when it doesn’t work the way the books promise, you think this is because you haven’t done it right enough or well enough. Author and speaker

Carolyn Myss

, who used to teach that you could manifest what you want if you just think right, evolved beyond that. When she was in Seattle in the 1990s she asked an audience of 600 to raise their hands if they had been able to create the reality they wanted. Not one person did!

As you are reading about to you and by you, your belly may have tightened again. Allow any holding you discover there to melt away. Smile and let this softening move all the way down into your pelvic floor and around to your back.

The 3rd Level of Higher Consciousness: Life Happens In You

You eventually begin to see that all of your reacting and controlling hasn’t brought you the ease and joy you long for. Instead of being the victim to your life and or needing to make it be any particular way, which is the endless game of struggle, you begin to get an inkling that Life is something to be listened to, opened to. This is where you start evolving into the next phase of higher consciousness, where Life is happening in you.

At this level of consciousness you begin to realize something very startling: most of the time, rather than experiencing Life, you think about it, seeing only the thoughts in your head! When you experience Life through your thoughts, you stop experiencing it as it is. Or, as the well-known French author Anais Nin once said, “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” You project your spells onto yourself and others rather than really seeing what is. When was the last time you truly saw a loved one’s face? If you are honest with yourself, it has probably been a long time.

It is in this phase of higher consciousness that you also realize that your suffering doesn’t come from the experiences of your life. Instead it comes from your stories about what is happening. It comes from inside of you! There could be a gray day and you’re just fine. Then on another gray day you could be miserable. You may say it is because the day is gray, but it comes from your story about the day, not the day itself.

This is where you begin to live what we have been calling the you-turn. You become less interested in being a victim to your life or even trying to make it be any different than it is. You realize that the healing you long for comes when you turn your attention within. When you get to know the spells that are the source of your suffering, you can unhook from them and come back to Life.

Do a you-turn and ask, “What is asking to be seen?” Be curious about what sits here right now.

photo: angus

The 4th Level of Higher Consciousness: Life Happens For You

The more you become curious about what is happening rather than reacting and controlling, the more you come to a wonderful realization that your life is for you. Rather than Life being something that is happening to you that you must control, you realize there are no ordinary moments! And you are one step further on the journey to higher consciousness.

Life is not a random series of events. It is a

highly intelligent unfolding

that is putting you in the exact situations you need in order to see and unhook from the spells that keep you separate from its flow. No matter what is happening in your life, you finally understand that Life knows what it is doing.

At this level of consciousness, rather than Life being something you have to mold and shape into what you want it to be, you begin to show up for Life exactly as it is. Yes, the flow of Life includes pain, loss and death. But resisting the pains of Life only turn them it into suffering, and the suffering that comes from resistance is always much greater than directly experiencing your pain. Instead of tightening around your experiences and turning away from them, which only thickens your cloud bank of struggle, you bring your attention to your experience, whatever it is.

“Life is not a random series of events. It is a highly intelligent unfolding.”

Even little moments of curiosity about what is going on right now sprinkled throughout your day are powerful! Every time you respond rather than react to what is going on inside of you, what was formerly bound up begins to loosen. Remember, your natural state is free-flowing aliveness. When that aliveness gets trapped in the spells, your energy and joy dim. When the spells receive the light of your attentiveness, they let go, and the trapped energy flows freely, bringing with it the bliss of openness. Remember: Life is setup, to bring up, what has been bound up, so it can open up, to be freed up, so you can show up for Life!

Close your eyes for a few moments and open into this living moment of your life. Hear it, sense it, feel it. This is the only moment that matters in your whole life for it is the only moment where Life is happening!

The 5th Level of Higher Consciousness: Life Happens Through You

The for you phase of higher consciousness shows you that there is no such thing as an ordinary moment in your life and helps you to see that Life is speaking to you at all moments. Becoming curious about what you are experiencing and giving it the light of compassionate attention so it can let go, you evolve into the next level of consciousness of allowing Life to move through you. This is where you recognize that Life is trustable. It is not always likable, but it knows what it is doing.

Imagine a life where you trust Life implicitly. Every morning you wake up with a sense of adventure. Your belly is soft, your mind is curious and your heart is open. Rather than struggling with Life, you open to it, even when you are facing deep challenges. If you find yourself caught in reaction, you give your reaction the attention it needs to let go.

Just as when you unkink a hose, the vibrant flow of energy that is Life can now move freely through you and this brings forth the joy and aliveness you so deeply long for. Creativity that you could never imagine on your own becomes clear to you, blessing yourself and everyone you meet with the wisdom of the meadow of Life.

You experience deep gratitude for absolutely everything. You see that your life is dependent on every ounce of creativity that has ever happened in the universe. You also see that all that has happened to you, even the difficult, has been a part of your journey back into Life. Step by step Life is bringing you into higher consciousness, into the ability to be fully here for Life. Now you can relax and show up for the adventure. As Cynthia Bourgeault so beautifully says in her book Mystical Hope, “You find your way by being sensitively and sensually connected to exactly where you are, letting ‘here’ reach out and lead you.”

photo: angus

The 6th Level of Higher Consciousness: Life Is You

The more you can stand with Life, allowing it to move through you rather than reacting to it or controlling it, the more you begin to get glimpses of the sixth level of consciousness in which you see that Life is you. You are no longer a separate being. Instead, you merge completely back into the creative flow of Life, understanding that everything—every rock, person, cloud, molecule and ladybug—is you. You are Life! As Eckhart Tolle said, “You are not in the universe; you are the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”

All is well. Come here.

As you look closely at the Six Phases of Higher Consciousness, you will see that the first two are about fixing, changing, resisting and trying to control Life (Life is happening to you and by you). These phases are the world of your storyteller that doesn’t want what is here (doesn’t know how to open to Life) and wants what is not here (I can have what I want if I just think right). Throughout both of these levels of consciousness, there is a veil between you and the living experience of Life because neither phase is about showing up for the creative river of Life.

The next two phases of higher consciousness are about using your mind to be curious about what is happening rather than resisting and controlling. In Life is happening in you, you recognize that the storyteller inside of you is what separates you from Life. So rather than trying to change anything, you become interested in what you are experiencing in any given moment. The more you are here for Life, the easy and the difficult, the joyous and the sorrowful, unhooking from all of your spells, the more clear it becomes that Life knows what it is doing and it is for you.

The final two phases of higher consciousness are all about coming home to the meadow. The more you live the truth that Life is for you, the more you relax into the flow, bringing you to the joy of Life moving through you. As your cloud bank dissipates, you not only recognize the meadow again, you recognize that you are the meadow! Life is you and you are Life!

“You are not in the universe; you are the universe, an intrinsic part of it.”

Most people live in the first two phases of higher consciousness, to you and by you, never knowing that right in the middle of these beliefs is a doorway into the last four. Life is waking you up from the contraction of the first two and into the opening of the last four. This is not only for your own healing, but for the healing of all beings, because as you see through your cloud bank of struggle, you become a healing presence in the world.

There is a paradoxical truth that is important to acknowledge. Human beings are evolving from the first level of consciousness to the sixth. It is also true that most days you will experience a number of these phases. It is not about getting rid of any particular phase or making one better than the other. They are all part of Life, and as you evolve, you will recognize and be able to embrace them all.

The Truth of Trust

In order to evolve into and through the last four levels of consciousness, the tattered threads of your trust of Life need to be rewoven. You, like most people, don’t trust Life! It certainly feels untrustworthy. Life breaks your heart, brings illnesses to your body, and feels, at times, as though it gives you way more than you can handle.

If you don’t trust it, how can you show up for it, opening to all that it is offering you in every experience you have? How can you allow it to bring you, step by step, from unconsciousness into higher consciousness? There is a shift of perception that will help you immensely in relearning how to trust Life, discovering that your life, rather than being something that needs to be controlled, is something that can be opened to. The shift is: Life is smarter than you!

Most of us are so caught in our storyteller that we live in a small world. What we pay attention to all day long is the cloud bank around our heads that is made out of our spells. We don’t see what is going on here! And we definitely don’t recognize the meadow.

As a means of opening your awareness from the tight and small world of your storyteller into a more spacious perspective, I invite you into what I call a big-picture exploration. Imagine you are sitting on the moon, looking at the beautiful blue-green jewel that is our planet. See it as a living being that has been unfolding for 4½ billion years. Look beyond it into the black, velvety depth of space that is filled with more stars than there are grains of sand on every beach of the Earth!

Now bring your attention back to the Earth floating in front of you, and as you drink in its beauty, recognize that absolutely everything on this planet was created from atoms that come from the stars—and that includes you! So everything you see is made out of stardust!

photo: angus

Now in your imagination, see the evolution of Earth as a movie. At its inception it was just a ball of gas and dust. Fast-forward the movie in your mind’s eye and see land and water appearing as the Earth’s atmosphere forms. Then see Life beginning to come together into various rudimentary beings in the seas. Now see Life crawl out of the seas and onto the continents as a wave of green flows across the formerly barren land. Insects appear, animals emerge and dinosaurs come and go.

In the evolution of Life on this planet, there was a time when there were no creatures with thumbs, so Life could not be picked up to be used and explored. Now see life evolving a few million years ago into a form that had two arms with fingers and thumbs, along with the kind of brain that was interested in picking up Life and exploring It. Life had never shown up in this way before!

Now see early human beings coming together into tribes. As their frontal lobes became more complex, see them discovering language, figuring out how to use tools, cultivating the land, creating villages and towns, and then creating the wheel and ships that sail across the oceans.

“You are a community of 70 trillion cells that pump blood through 65,000 miles of arteries and veins”

Fast forward the movie again to just a few hundred years ago. See one set of your great, great, great grandparents being born, growing up, discovering one another, birthing one half of the partnership of your great, great grandparents and then disappearing back into mystery. This same cycle brought forth your grandparents, your parents and then you. Now see yourself appearing out of mystery at the exact place on this planet where you were born. Watch yourself evolve from a baby, to a young child, to a teenager and then into an adult.

As you are watching the movie of your life, bring it to this morning when you woke up, began your day and eventually came to the moment where you are reading this article. Realize that all of the millions of moments of your life have unfolded to this moment and this moment is the leading edge of the wave of evolution on this planet. Open to the knowing that this moment is no ordinary moment. Right here, right now, you are being given a very rare gift: the phenomenal gift of Life. For a short slice of time you get to be here, and then you too will dissolve back into mystery and Life will continue to unfold.

Pause for a moment and contemplate all of the creativity that has gone before you that allows you and everything around you to exist.  This simple act of contemplation can shift you into a state of higher consciousness.

Your Story

This movie about the unfolding of Life on this planet that we just explored is your story. You are a being who is an expression of 4½ billion years of Life evolving on this planet. You exist in this body because of the vast creativity that has gone before you. Let’s take your eyes for example. The first ancestors of your eyes came from polyps on the oceans floors that created cells that were able to differentiate light and dark.

In between that first rudimentary step into seeing and your ability to see are vast amounts of creativity that allow you to see this article! And it is not just your eyes that are dependent on the entire ingenuity of Life. Your whole life, like everybody else’s, is dependent on every single act of creativity that has ever happened on this planet.

It is amazing to recognize the creativity that enabled Life to take stardust and make this planet and everything on it, including you. It is even more astounding to see that as you sit here reading this, you are a community of 70 trillion cells that pump blood through 65,000 miles of arteries and veins, send messages along your nerves at the speed of light, regulate hormones, repair cells and digest food without a single thought from you. If you doubt that there is an amazing Intelligence that permeates and penetrates all of Life, just acknowledge what is happening in your body right now.

Because you don’t recognize the Intelligence at the heart of Life, you believe you are separate from it. Believing you are separate from it, you buy into the illusion that you must control it. As soon as you believe you must control it, you become cut off from it, losing sight of the joy of being open to Life.  This perspective keeps you from living in a place of higher consciousness.

You actually trust Life a lot. You trust it enough to beat your heart and breathe your breath. But you think that the Intelligence at the heart of Life has nothing to do with your daily life. You, like most people, bought into the arrogance of the human ego that says that it is in charge. Because of this belief in separation, you think your life is just a random series of events that you must mold and shape into what you think they should be.

photo: angus

What would happen if this was not so? What would your life look like if you understood that the same Intelligence that keeps the planets spinning, heals the cuts on your skin, and brings spring forth out of winter is with you every step of the way? Can you open to the possibility that this creative Intelligence is weaving your life out of the primal opposites of dark and light and it is giving you exactly what you need in order to evolve from unconsciousness into a phase of higher consciousness? What would it be like if you understood that the same awesome force of evolution that created this planet and brought Life out of the sea and onto land is working its magic in your life?

To get even an inkling of what we are exploring here will allow you to let go of that grip of control enough that you can begin to feel the magic of trusting your life. The more you trust it, the more you will show up for it, and the more you show up for it, the more you will see that Life is wiser than you and is bringing you the exact set of experiences you need in order to come back to Life.

Lift your eyes from the page and recognize that in the vastness of all time this moment will never be repeated, and you have the privilege to bear witness to it.

What It Looks Like To Trust Life

When you realize that Life is smarter than you, Life becomes very interesting. Rather than being lost in your storyteller, you realize something very extraordinary is happening here: there are no ordinary moments in your life! You become much more alert to what is happening, both outside and inside of you. If one’s life is like an iceberg, most people just pay attention to the part above the water while what is really going on is happening underneath the “water level” of their everyday awareness.

“You realize something very extraordinary is happening here: there are no ordinary moments in your life”

It is true that you are driving, working, showering, cooking, arguing, making love, raising children, birthing and dying. But underneath it all is the unfolding of intelligent evolution, and you are a part of that. You are evolving from an unconscious human being into a conscious one. This is happening in every experience of your life—every experience! Life is for Life. It is supporting your shift from being asleep to being awake. Just as Life assists a peach tree in creating fruit by sustaining it with sun, rain, bees and the nourishment of the Earth, it is giving you exactly what you need in order to know the fruit of a conscious human being, which is the ability to be awake to Life.

Living from the truth that your life is for you, you begin to let go of the belief that your suffering is caused by something outside of you: other people, your job, the shape of your body, the kind of mate you have, the type of health you have, the kind of past you had, or the sort of mind you have. You begin to see that your suffering is coming from inside of you, caused by the spells. Yes, there are difficult things that happen in your life, but when you don’t get lost in your stories about them, you respond to the situation, gathering the gifts that are always embedded in the challenges of your life.  This is the gift of higher consciousness, you see that life is conspiring in your favor.

As you awaken into higher levels of consciousness, you become less interested in trying to change anything in your life and more interested in what is going on inside of you, especially in difficult situations. You have a deeper sense of allowing Life to put you in the exact situations you need in order for the core spells that make up your storyteller to be brought to the surface of your awareness. It is there that you can see them, watch them in action, and discover that they are just spells that were conditioned into you when you were young and that you no longer need to buy into them.

It is almost as if these deep and ancient spells of fear, shame, doubt, jealousy, not being enough, loneliness, and anger, to name a few, are like champagne bubbles that have been trapped inside of you. As your resistance to experiencing them lessens, they begin to loosen, arising to the surface to be seen. As they are fully seen, they burst, and the energy that was formerly trapped in them lets go. Rather than being afraid of this purification process, you begin to welcome it as the longing to be fully awake to Life becomes stronger than the fear of your spells.

Pause for a moment and check into your belly. Allow any holding you discover there to melt away and let a smile fill you with its healing presence. Allow this softening to move all the way down into your pelvic floor and around to your back. Feel the essence of your unfolding higher consciousness.

photo: angus

The Joy of Response-ability

Whether it is an illness, pain, a difficult neighbor, a compulsion, a financial crisis or any other challenging situation in your life, it can be initially threatening to your storyteller to take responsibility (the ability to respond) for your own experience. Old reactions that come from spells can be very strong. But you learn how to become like one of those three-foot tall inflatable dolls with a weight in the bottom. When you’re in a difficult situation, you feel like the doll when it is hit and falls over. More and more quickly, however, you do the you-turn, becoming curious about what this is bringing up inside of you, and you bounce back up again just like the doll does. You see that each situation is gently nudging you to expand into even higher levels of consciousness.

“All of the joy, clarity and aliveness you long for have always been with you, right here, right now”

This is where you truly begin to trust Life. You know that difficult situations are for you. You see that just as the body cleanses itself of foreign viruses and bacteria, your being will cleanse itself of the old spells. The more you want to see your spells, the more Life puts you in the situations that will bring them up so they can be touched enough with the light of your consciousness to let go. Thus you are no longer the victim to your life.

Even feelings like aloneness, or unending sadness, or the black hole of nothingness that seem so deep and real when you are resisting them become something to say “hello” to and touch with compassion. As you stand with them, they no longer have the power over you they used to have, and the energy that was bound up in them is released, opening you to the meadow that is always with you.

It is important to remember as you are bringing higher consciousness into your daily life that you have never left the meadow; you just thought that you had. All of the joy, clarity and aliveness you long for have always been with you, right here, right now. You just haven’t seen it because your storyteller has grabbed hold of your attention and rarely let it go. The more you allow Life to put you in the situations that bring up the core spells of your storyteller, the more your cloud bank will thin and you will be able to recognize and live from the meadow of your being.

This article originally appears in the Spring 2015 Issue of Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.  You can download a copy of this issue when you subscribe by clicking here.

This article on higher consciousness is excerpted from Mary O’Malleys awareness expanding book What’s in the Way is the Way.

About The Author

Mary O’Malley began changing her relationship with her challenges after a powerful awakening in the early 1970s, freeing her from a lifelong struggle with darkness. Mary’s new book What’s In the Way IS the Way, provides tools and techniques for healing fears, anxieties, shame and confusion, and transforming struggles into the peace we all long for. Mary is committed to helping people heal their inner wars, so they can become a part of the healing of our planet. Eckhart Tolle says “Thank you, Mary, for your contribution to the evolution of human consciousness.”   Visit her website: whatsinthewayistheway.com

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√ Love √ Like √ Gratitude √ Sharing Love n LIght – Martin

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[healthcare00897]

Skin Replacement Market: Shows Increasing Demand To Be Observed In The Coming Decade

Skin Replacement Market Introduction

Cosmetic industry has been a success story over the last few years compared to other consumer products. In cosmetic industry, skin replacement market is gaining remarkable share worldwide. The trend is attributed primarily to burn injuries and technological adoption to treat various skin-related issues. Burnt skin induces the growth of microbes and bacteria that ultimately results in rapid loss of body fluids. Thus, to protect the skin traditionally skin grafts from the donors or cadavers were used. However, uptake of these substitutes was impeded due to probability of graft rejection and unavailability of large skin patch. Hence, to resolve the problem synthetic skin substitutes came into picture to treat deep skin wounds which promotes regeneration of artificial skin. These technological advancements have led to enhanced survival of burned patients and in the past years several skin replacement products have been used for the treatment of chronic wounds. Skin replacement market is likely to grow at a relatively moderate pace in-between 2016 to 2020 before taking upward trend to 2023. The average sales is expected to go above 1.5X between 2016 and 2023.

Get Exclusive Sample Report at: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/4

Digital disruption along with increasing penetration of 3D printing technology is expected to drive the skin replacement market

Burn injuries have increased over the last few years. According to independent estimates, over 1.5 million population in the U.S. suffers from burn related skin loss each year. Similarly, in the United Kingdom approximately 175,000 report to emergency departments for the burn injuries and of these approximately 13,000 require hospital admissions. As a result, skin replacement product is expected to gain traction with innovative products being launched in the market including artificial skin. The industry will be further driven by increasing 3D printing technology in healthcare. Companies such as L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble leverages 3D printing technology to develop artificial skin.

Market Taxonomy:

Coherent Market Insights has segmented the skin replacement products market by

  Technology

  Product

On the basis of technology, 3D printing technology is expected to be the attractive segment driving huge revenue for market players.  Skin grown in laboratories will dominate the market throughout the forecast period.

Various types of skin replacement products have been divided in three major categories namely permanent skin replacement products, temporary skin replacement products and cultured epidermal skin replacement products.

North America to dominate the skin market with US$ 25 Bn spending on wound treatment and presence of over 14% geriatrics population

The skin replacement market report covers market analysis across regions – North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.

Global skin replacement market is witnessing a positive trend with North America and Europe as the main engine of growth. North America and Europe are expected to capture a major chunk of the market before easing out to Asia Pacific market by 2020.

North America currently represents the largest regional market for skin replacement products followed by Europe. A rise in the number of burn cases has been majorly driving the skin replacement substitutes market in these two regions.

Penetration rate of skin replacement products in Asia Pacific is still at its nascent stage. However, the growth will gain upward trend by mid of forecast period. The growth will be driven by India and Japan.

Companies such as L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble leverages 3D printing technology to develop artificial skin replacement products

Some of the key players in the skin replacement market include Platelet BioGenesis, Tengion, and Cellular Dynamics International, TissueGene, Inc., Cynata Therapeutics Limited, L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble.

Companies need to emphasis on value creation by channelizing product manufacturing capability with digital marketing. Close collaboration with leading life science universities could further help companies to deliver innovative skin replacement products in the market.

Inquire Here Before Purchase of Research Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/talk-to-analyst/4

Key developments

Increasing number of approvals for novel skin treatment procedures is expected to facilitate growth of the global skin replacement market over the forecast period. For instance, in September 2018, the U.S. FDA granted premarket approval for Recell (Avita), which is a spray-on treatment for burns in patients older than 18 years.

Moreover, increasing focus on research and development activities by key players is projected to drive the market growth in the future. For instance, in October 2018, Platelet BioGenesis announced that they are in the process of developing a device that imitates the conditions under which human platelets are generated, for patients recovering from injuries, surgery, or treatments like chemotherapy that can lead to an extremely low platelet count.

Moreover, in January 2019, Proctor & Gamble launched Opté, which is a tool aimed at covering skin conditions such as hyperpigmentation, and age spots by simply gliding the device over the skin’s surface. Such product innovations are likely to benefit growth of the skin replacement market.

About Coherent Market Insights

Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.

Contact Us

Mr. Shah

Coherent Market Insights

1001 4th Ave, #3200

Seattle, WA 98154

Tel: +1-206-701-6702

Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com

[healthcare00897]

How Coronavirus is Impacting Skin Replacement Market Growth to be Fuelled by 2020-2026

Cosmetic industry has been a success story over the last few years compared to other consumer products. In cosmetic industry, skin replacement market is gaining remarkable share worldwide. The trend is attributed primarily to burn injuries and technological adoption to treat various skin-related issues. Burnt skin induces the growth of microbes and bacteria that ultimately results in rapid loss of body fluids. Thus, to protect the skin traditionally skin grafts from the donors or cadavers were used. However, uptake of these substitutes was impeded due to probability of graft rejection and unavailability of large skin patch. Hence, to resolve the problem synthetic skin substitutes came into picture to treat deep skin wounds which promotes regeneration of artificial skin. These technological advancements have led to enhanced survival of burned patients and in the past years several skin replacement products have been used for the treatment of chronic wounds. Skin replacement market is likely to grow at a relatively moderate pace in-between 2016 to 2020 before taking upward trend to 2023. The average sales is expected to go above 1.5X between 2016 and 2023.

Request Sample Copy of Research Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/4

Digital disruption along with increasing penetration of 3D printing technology is expected to drive the skin replacement market

Burn injuries have increased over the last few years. According to independent estimates, over 1.5 million population in the U.S. suffers from burn related skin loss each year. Similarly, in the United Kingdom approximately 175,000 report to emergency departments for the burn injuries and of these approximately 13,000 require hospital admissions. As a result, skin replacement product is expected to gain traction with innovative products being launched in the market including artificial skin. The industry will be further driven by increasing 3D printing technology in healthcare. Companies such as L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble leverages 3D printing technology to develop artificial skin.

Market Taxonomy:

Coherent Market Insights has segmented the skin replacement products market by

Technology

Product

On the basis of technology, 3D printing technology is expected to be the attractive segment driving huge revenue for market players.  Skin grown in laboratories will dominate the market throughout the forecast period.

Inquire Here Before Purchase of Research Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/talk-to-analyst/4

Various types of skin replacement products have been divided in three major categories namely permanent skin replacement products, temporary skin replacement products and cultured epidermal skin replacement products.

North America to dominate the skin market with US$ 25 Bn spending on wound treatment and presence of over 14% geriatrics population

The skin replacement market report covers market analysis across regions – North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.

Global skin replacement market is witnessing a positive trend with North America and Europe as the main engine of growth. North America and Europe are expected to capture a major chunk of the market before easing out to Asia Pacific market by 2020.

North America currently represents the largest regional market for skin replacement products followed by Europe. A rise in the number of burn cases has been majorly driving the skin replacement substitutes market in these two regions.

Penetration rate of skin replacement products in Asia Pacific is still at its nascent stage. However, the growth will gain upward trend by mid of forecast period. The growth will be driven by India and Japan.

Companies such as L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble leverages 3D printing technology to develop artificial skin replacement products

Some of the key players in the skin replacement market include Platelet BioGenesis, Tengion, and Cellular Dynamics International, TissueGene, Inc., Cynata Therapeutics Limited, L’Oreal and Proctor & Gamble.

Companies need to emphasis on value creation by channelizing product manufacturing capability with digital marketing. Close collaboration with leading life science universities could further help companies to deliver innovative skin replacement products in the market.

Key developments

Increasing number of approvals for novel skin treatment procedures is expected to facilitate growth of the global skin replacement market over the forecast period. For instance, in September 2018, the U.S. FDA granted premarket approval for Recell (Avita), which is a spray-on treatment for burns in patients older than 18 years.

Moreover, increasing focus on research and development activities by key players is projected to drive the market growth in the future. For instance, in October 2018, Platelet BioGenesis announced that they are in the process of developing a device that imitates the conditions under which human platelets are generated, for patients recovering from injuries, surgery, or treatments like chemotherapy that can lead to an extremely low platelet count.

Download PDF Brochure Of This Research Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-pdf/4

Moreover, in January 2019, Proctor & Gamble launched Opté, which is a tool aimed at covering skin conditions such as hyperpigmentation, and age spots by simply gliding the device over the skin’s surface. Such product innovations are likely to benefit growth of the skin replacement market.

About Coherent Market Insights

Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.

Contact Us

Mr. Shah

Coherent Market Insights

1001 4th Ave, #3200

Seattle, WA 98154

Tel: +1-206-701-6702

Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com