#sometimes as an artist you revel in the ability to create the most ridiculous shit

[liyashi]

Inspired by this twt

Plant x zombie…

[batteredwarriorstillstanding]

Alright, so listen up, Smart-Ass...first of all, entertaining as all of the hyperbolic comparisons to the impossibly pure, sexually untouched, puritanical sect (does that really even exist on this continent) and the even more hysterical (not to mention infinitely more accurate of the two. Not accurate....just closer than "saint-like," virtuous man of God) clueless middle aged eunuch, whose inexperience can be attributed to a level of naivete and cluelessness almost impossible to comprehend for the typical....correct chromosome count possessing reader, who does not have a difficult decision when decidong which character on Darwin's human evolutionary chart they most identify...I hesitate to make this concession....first of all because it's a concession...in THIS forum, on THIS topic nonetheless. Also, seemingly granting legitimacy to the oft-distorted, ALWAYS spiked with shameful dishonesty "revelations" about me that I must have wasted 10000 words refuting to people who either didn't consider it an issue (HOOOW!!??lol) needed no refutation in the first place, much less the detailed version I felt compelled to vomit, or were adversaries, either for personal, or situational reasons who were not open to reversing themselves, and, in fact, very often found new falsehoods to create within corrected info provided. The truth is that while every claim I made during this foray (about 14 months long, probably averaging 2-3 sometimes ridiculously long posts over 4 blogs-or 5....something like that. 6 possible too...honestly am not sure) I have never been wilfully dishonest. Made a couple of honest mistakes that were corrected to the best of my ability, and utilized my normal copious allotment of sarcasm, fesiciousness (that is a word, I think....do not have a CLUE how to spell it: Its definition would be " what people often mistake for sarcasm. Making a statement opposite universally accepted truth for effect i.e. "That Barry Manilow is one bad motherfucker.") and I certainly tiptoes around some uh....less than gentlemanly things said and done in the past, but I was very careful to avoid outright lying....and, I addressed a few things I ABSOLUTELY would have seen as a guckin' GOLDEN opportunity to alter fate in my favor with the help of a little dishonesty. I passed those up. You see kids, your integrity, for ANY positive outcome, ANY dodging of consequence, ANY dollar amount....is simply nit worth compromising a single iota. Take it from Me." Lol...just kidding...

But, I did not wish to exacerbate a, perhaps....justifiably imperfect, reputation in that area....particularly after an honest mistake earky on had reasonably light hearted (thank gid) accusation of "bullshit con artist" leveled at me from a....less than ideal source. By that, I mean the worst possible. Luckily,it worked itself out and was explained (fucking 1 or 3 months ago when it didn't fucking matter) but; I was and remain absolutely grateful (what the fuck ever) So, continuing our course on the Honesty Express, it seems our next stop is Honest Self Appraisal.....and, after adding this tool of the Saints to our new repertoire, we realize that just because we can explain aspects of our self, abilities, weaknesses, past mistakes, etc in a fashion that is both thorough AND honest....it behooves us to include certain data we deem both not accurately indicative of our true selves and easily buried in a generalized admission of ADHD diagnoses, occasional social anxiety, and having occasionally encountered the need for "anger management" assistance. Only with skilled and persistent prying would I reveal that "ADHD diagnoses" came after failing English (easily my best subject because formatting fictional short stories....which essentially meant "numbering the pages" was too difficult and I was embarassed to turn shit in because I was made fun of the first time) "social anxiety" meant COMPLETE isolation for 3 to 6 days, often in darkness, away from even family, and "anger management" could be translate into "it's nice so many of our family members are attorneys." So, I will make an admission here, in the interest of good will, self depreciation, and frankly...fairness and accuracy before I respond to the rest of this shit, uh, I mean "argumentative explanation for"....fuck. what was it for. I will double check. I was right, though. That is whatcha want to remember. After doing this, I will explain why, though she has every right to her opinion...it's....questionable (like that word? I really mean something far more dismissive and judgemental, but....) oh sorry....anyway, (to be cont.)

[wordsandrobots]

(I apologise in advance for writing a long ramble off the above post; I hope your day was not thrown off too much by interacting with the customary dipsticks, and that you won't mind me jotting down what it made me think about. This being said --)

As much as I agree, and as much as I believe little can be done about the established ideas people bring to fiction (regarding, say, conceptions of 'lasting peace', the appropriate use of violence, or the reasons wars are fought), I do think it's sometimes worth looking at the existence of 'Gundam fans missing the point' as a failing of the source material.

What I mean is, there is often a disconnect between the message of a story and the medium by which it is communicated. I was reminded recently of a facet of this in Gundam Unicorn, one of the biggest offenders in the franchise, to my mind. Unicorn's script focuses on understanding in the face of pervasive violence. Everything from Banagher's focus on Minerva's feelings and desires above her duty, to Zinnerman and Marida's relationship, to Full Frontal's nihilism is using what it 'means' to be a newtype as a lens for stressing how important human connection is, and how much conflict breaks that down.

But aesthetically, the show is a riot of military pornography. It is one of the most mechanically-obsessed animes I think I've ever watched, throwing mobile suit after mobile suit at the viewer and revelling in its ability to render them so crisply. I've not read the novels, so I'm unsure to what degree this lies at the feet of the people in charge of the adaptation, but even in the Unicorn Gundam's ultimate transformation, there is a heavy emphasis placed on the scale, complexity, and visceral, thrilling *violence* of the mecha. That is part of what is supposed to keep us engaged, as viewers.

The same is true of most entries in this franchise and of other shows of the kind. Not to the same degree, and others are far more successful at turning the machinery into a source of horror, or at least cutting through the mechanical aspects to centre the human core But the fact remains: this is all built around the delights of watching giant robots beat the shit out of each other.

There's nothing wrong with that, to be clear. I'm not making a moral point. I don't have time for the idea violence in media per se is indicative of much beyond artists wanting to explore a facet of the world we live in, or that creating beauty from violence is somehow a mistake. Giddy thrills in fiction are harmless in and of themselves.

But it leads to what I think of as the Star Wars Problem. The original trilogy culminates with Luke Skywalker throwing away his sword. He rejects aggression and controls his emotions, letting go of the violence to which he has been incited and abandoning concern for his physical embodiment. That is the point he becomes a true Jedi, achieving what his teachers have been urging him towards all along.

Except . . . we, the audience, are here for the laser kendo.

If you follow what we are told, a proper Jedi master would never need to switch their lightsaber on. 'Wars do not make one great' and so on. Thing is, the spectacle of sci-fi knights is the selling point. A tension between depicting dramatic, cinematic fights and the underlying philosophical thrust is relatively trivial to navigate at a narrative level, but it's also something the medium of 'The Seven Sammari in Space' is simply incapable of resolving. The Jedi can never be shown more than briefly as what we are told they should be. The lightsabers, the dogfights, the ridiculous set-pieces that are atrocious minefields of acceptable targets if you stop and think about them for five seconds -- these are too much part of the appeal. They cannot be meaningfully undercut, much less cut out. Are you seriously expecting a Star Wars film to say X-Wings (stand-ins for fighter aircraft, machines designed specifically for killing people) aren't the coolest thing ever?

The same trap applies to Gundam. It is and always has focused heavily on the human cost of war. The very first episode of the very first series depicts a peaceful suburban landscape being absolutely annihilated by the callousness of the military on both sides in a conflict the inhabitants have no meaningful control over.

At the same time, it's stuffed to the gills with cool robots.

There is, in my opinion, a basic disingenuousness to the meme about the point of Gundam flying over the head of the viewer because it presents something inescapable about the form of a mecha anime as a test of a viewer's media literacy. Which is that it doesn't actually matter how hard the show works to repudiate the spectacle with character-focused queasiness -- Amuro Ray is a press-ganged teenager, Heero Yuy is a self-endangering unethical experiment, Mikazuki Augus lives up to the moniker 'devil', etc, etc -- we are there to watch robots be cool and commit violence.

And you have to make peace with the fact that means any message conveyed by shows like these is vulnerable to the quite reasonable argument of: yeah, but they make the show of force look good. Because they do. The concept of a fighting mecha is rooted in an infatuation with weaponry as a means of changing the world. You have to work extremely hard to get 'war does not achieve anything' to stick when you're using this particular vector. Again, it can be done! The tension remains inescapable and with it come a lot of people who'll fixate on the aesthetics regardless of the narrative and, well.

Produce the Gundam Unicorn OVAs, actual Nazi-soldier-Zaku and all.

(Full disclosure: my partner is a pacifist [as in committed to the moral and ethical position of non-violence] so I have thought long and hard about my own stance on the use of violence over the years. There are a lot of Things I Could Say about Gundam's general failure to provide tangible alternatives to fighting, how it treats fighting as 'inevitable' or 'natural', and the shortcomings of 'war is bad' as a message when standing on its own. But those are for another time.)

Some Gundam fans definitely missed the point of the franchise. If you’re so dead-certain war is the only way to lasting peace, I genuinely don’t understand why you’re watching the “War Is Bad” show.

[feministangertranslator]

The Daily Deluge

Image from Femstella

Bombshells big and small are being dropped daily as the result of the #metoo movement. I feel disappointed I don't have more hours in the day to read every tidbit of news about what is shaping up to be another major chapter in feminism, let alone sit down, process, and write about my perspective on it. I really wanted to have written more here by now. I am so busy loving the smell the Napalm in the morning, it’s hard to get much of anything else done.  Sometimes I want to call in sick to everything and everybody, make a bowl of popcorn and watch the patriarchy burn down from the comfort of my cozy home.  Honestly, I could eat this shit up all day and don’t want to miss a minute of it.

This, unfortunately, leads me to often find myself in ravenous consumption mode as opposed to thoughtful and deliberate output mode: I am devouring all of the news of the men who have been accused of sexual misconduct and their (mostly ridiculous) statements - I’m not even going to call those PR and attorney crafted liability avoiders apologies. Equally, I enjoy all of the beautiful heart-filled articles, posts, and videos from other survivors of sexual assault who are expressing reactions, thoughts, and feelings to which I strongly relate. I have a docket of saved articles in my Facebook account, tons of bookmarked Instagram posts, and cued up podcasts competing for my attention. I have to force myself to pull out of the social media rabbit hole, get up and away from my computer (sometimes TV) to go brush my teeth, straighten my hair, put food in my mouth, earn money, and do other things that are vital to taking care of myself. They seem so much more boring in comparison to the day of reckoning that seems to be unfolding right before my eyes.

I must resist this siren call for a few reasons. Firstly, I know this is the position our capitalist society wants me in: too busy watching, ingesting, consuming, buying, and promoting the ideas and goods being peddled by others to get angry about all the more important injustices and inequities from the fallout of capitalism befalling me and the rest of us. Fuck that. That is one of the reasons why I stopped working in television. I couldn't imagine myself working so hard to be (if I were so lucky) a part of a successful show; at the end of the day, even the best creation will always be an opiate of the people to me.

Whether it is the thoughts, theories, or products of others, like most of us Americans, I have been trained to consume and have reveled in it for too long. (My family is Romanian and I can definitely see the difference in some of our shopping and lifestyle habits). And I want to use my time, energy, effort, voice and dollars to only support who and what I believe in, and what will support and sustain me. It’s not just money that I have to be concerned with, it’s time and energy - which frankly, are more precious, and affect me, my psyche and actions, and therefore my life, tremendously.

What I choose to consume has to have the purpose either to benefit, uplift or inspire me, too. Because I am also dying to create and share I have to be mindful to not overconsume to numb myself out and satiate the fire inside me to make stuff. While part of me wants America to take a few cues from the Nordic market economy model or conversely maybe give Libertarianism a real shot, American capitalism can obviously work for others, albeit a select handful. So I have to believe I am also worthy of a piece of that pie, and there has to be a market for what I have to offer.  

For example, I find myself obsessing about the Roy Moore story. I need to constantly remind myself that paying too much attention to him and Leigh Corfman, with whom I identify with strongly who was brave enough to shed light on how he molested her by grooming and taking advantage of her, at some point puts me in the observer and consumer mode. If I’m not careful, the contact high I get from her beautiful inspired acts can placate me enough to detract from what I can do for myself, too. It is definitely easier to watch her do it than to put myself out on a limb in the public eye, even though I passionately want to get out there myself.

As a woman who was at many points throughout my childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood silenced through intimidation and abuse, I must heed the call to speak up and let it surpass my urge to stay comfortable and quiet because I think it will keep me “safe.” I must constantly fight the further ingrained notion that others (especially men) know better than me. That I’m not worthy of listening to. Or that I don’t know quite enough yet to open my mouth. This has plagued me for years - despite getting an English degree from America’s top public university, making it through the ringer to become a licensed attorney in one of the most difficult states to pass the bar, ranking obscenely high in verbal ability on an IQ test, doing well at public speaking in some of my jobs, and even breaking into difficult industries and making multiple career changes.

External achievements are no match against a deeply long-held belief that I am only here to serve others, and my life, safety, comfort, and opinions don’t matter. It would follow and haunt me in every job or relationship I had. I truly believe it started with experiencing many “adverse childhood experiences,” specifically being sexually abused by someone in my family who was supposed to take care of me instead of use and abuse me. This, of course, set me up for many years of unconsciously repeating that dynamic in a lot of my other relationships and further cementing this completely false belief as a “truth” for me. I know this is why it is important for me to speak now. It is the antidote to all my internalized shame, hatred and anger. That was someone else’s bullshit, dysfunction and pain put upon me, and I don’t want it anymore. And if anything I say can help someone else stop putting up with it, too, it will all be worth it.

I know I am not fully ready to say or act upon all that I have weighing on my heart and mind yet. Because I am insanely jealous of the output of others who are, I know I will do it, too. I have to make small steps that work for me, be patient, and hold onto my knowing I will get there when it is my time. As Julia Cameron said in the Artist Way, jealousy is a roadmap; to paraphrase in my terms, its purpose is to tell you where you want to go, what you want to do, and who you want to be by making you so fucking mad when you see someone else is doing it and you are not. It’s that simple.

I know why I am a bit hesitant to say what I truly feel, talk about my own experiences, and make myself vulnerable to judgment. It is way easier to read something someone else did and share it with a quick comment on social media as opposed to say and create something from my own heart. There is less of my skin in the game. And the game of speaking out about feminism and sexual abuse and assault? I already know what the rules are. When women publicly speak out about anything related to women’s rights, people (almost all of them men) systematically call them fat and ugly and threaten to rape and kill them. They try to silence them by attacking their womanhood: their looks (what society has deemed a woman’s hottest commodity), their sense of emotional and personal safety (through means of violating the anatomical vulnerability of their genitals in comparison to men’s), their actual lives (murder, duh), and if that isn’t enough, their straight up worthiness of being alive (by making them feel unattractive, unsafe, unloved, unwanted, unintelligent, unworthy and ultimately emotionally annihilated). For a woman not up to withstanding that attack, the threatening perpetrator doesn’t have to actually follow through on his threat; his words and fear they create are enough. Men systemically perpetrating violence against women is alive and well in our culture and we all know it.

Wielding the power to drum up fear of personal attack or violence is the main tool used to control women and it can be incredibly effective against one who has already experienced such awful acts. And words can be just as powerful as actions in affecting someone’s sense of safety. These trolls know that. That’s exactly what Trump did to Rosie O’Donnell when he called her awful names and whatever else he has done to other women who ruffle his delicate feathers. A woman who has experienced that attack and/or violence firsthand has to be able to do a lot of work to come to the other side of it to feel free walking down the street safely, and even more so to be brave enough to talk about such controversial subjects in the public eye. So since I already know what the rules of the game are, I am in the process of deciding how I and when I want to play it, what I need to strengthen, and equipment I need to bring with me to make sure I come out of it victorious and intact.