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angelsaxis · 2 years

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i agree w u that we need to be way way more critical abt shit like makeup and plastic surgery wherein "freedom of choice" is just leaning into patriarchal white-centric ideals of beauty etc. but i think freedom of choice is still impt in other aspects like life goals and saying that choice doesnt matter as much as fighting patriarchy in all aspects seems a little off to me? like if a woman happens to want kids, which is a gendered expectation, then by your post's standards, she isnt fighting the patriarchy. if she chooses to stay at home and watch the kid because thats genuinely what fulfills her more than a job and is fortunate that her spouse wants to and can financially support her, thats also going to be considered not feminist simply because she isnt doing the opposite of gender norms, according to your post. same goes for if a woman wears gendered clothes? has a job like childcare teacher, nannying, nurse? i dont like the idea of defanged (and largely cishet white abled) feminism as much as you, but acting like all forms of freedom of choice that conforms to gender norms is inherently bad strays really close to political lesbianism ideology wherein even choosing to be romantically involved with a man becomes traitorous. because dating men Is a gender norm. short of being a radfem, there is a line where we recognize that choice does matter because otherwise, the act of dating a man in itself plays into gender roles and expectations.

i just think theres a bit more nuance. i.e. genuinely further normalizing hurtful rhetoric/ideas (which makeup and plastic surgery do) should be looked at critically and i personally think we ought to abandon aesthetic surgeries n makeup for the sake of simply fitting into beauty standards all together. i also think that people will always have innate preferences. mine is towards counselling and psychology- is it unfeminist to go into a field that is woman dominated? must we let go of all freedom to choose to do "the most anti-patriarchy thing possible"? i feel like more nuance is necessary or we fall into traps for ourselves and actually end up stifling other women. like women who dont want to go into male dominated fields because its rife with sexism. like women who genuinely want kids with a man. like women who dont have the capacity emotionalmy or physically due to disabilities to work the jobs they are qualified for and so they choose to be homemakers. or even trans women who choose to do makeup because it saves them from transmisogyny. like yes, absolutely we need to critique where some preferences come from because, like with beauty standards and diets and skincare and fashion/makeup trends, some of them can be genuinely harmful to others (especially young girls who are exposed only to manicured picture-perfect bodies and faces). but at the end of the day, sacrificing All individual preferences will not make women happier, healthier or freer. and i mean this for ALL women.

yes I agree that nuance is important! that post is only a few paragraphs long and I made it in a moment of anger--so please nobody think that when I went into it, I was thinking that any conformity to a gender role is worse than death itself lol. like im literally in cornrows and a woman's shirt now.

that's why i always make the distinction between feminist action vs nonfeminist actions, rather than IDing as a feminist and then taking all the things I do as either qualifying or disqualifying me as a feminist. There's women who, for any reason, choose to be homemakers rather than work. Is that a valid choice for them? Yeah! Is it a feminist action? In my personal opinion, no--but is it wrong? Hell no. It's just that, on the list of things that a woman might say are things she's done to dismantle the patriarchy, being a SAHM/homemaker wouldn't be on the list. That's not a bad thing. We can't live our lives wholly dedicated dismantling something to the point of our own self destruction (and considering how deeply gender roles run--even down to social interactions--this would be impossible, anyways). that's where liberal feminism and choice feminism are in the wrong--it's ID first, and then the belief that as along as she's a woman Doing What She Wants, she's fighting the patriarchy (in lots of ways this is the case, but in lots of ways it definitely isn't). so a woman ends up saying its a totes feminist thing to like. actively support plastic surgery and the harmful makeup culture. rather than admitting that those are things that a feminist can do that don't make her not a feminist, but that definitely aren't feminist actions.

(I think most of the people reblogging that post understood as much, considering how there's any number of folks reblogging that who are women w long hair or wearing bras or doing something else that's a gender role and thus supported by the patriarchy)

My beef is with the pushing of personal empowerment over liberation from the thing that makes you need to feel empowered in the first place--and then acting like that is a win against patriarchy. like in the ideal world, people wouldn't need to wear make up, you know? Like, there'd be no expectation for women of any type of contour their faces and coat their skin and clog their pores and spend dozens or even hundreds every year to look a Specific Way. The fact that trans women have to wear make up for their safety is evidence that we live in a society where women are at risk of facing extreme violence for non-conformity--that's a fundamental change to society that make up, while helpful in a lot of these situations, bandages over. Bear in mind that I'm not saying that trans women shouldn't ever wear make up or anything! Make up as a choice for personal freedom/safety obv varies between women and by situation. It's still a gender expectation that men don't have to face, though.

My post was aimed more at the hardline liberal feminists/choice feminists who truly do think that make up is like. a 100% liberating tool whose acceptance actually contributes to the furthering of women's rights and the dismantling of patriarchy. it was generally directed at the women who call themselves feminsts but don't actually have like. an ounce of anything negative to say about the gender roles that are forced on us from birth. like they keep insisting that there is liberation through conformity as long as you change your mind about it or change the definition of feminism entirely. I don't think anyone's evil or partaking wholeheartedly in the oppression of women by wearing makeup n heels or being a SAHM, but again I know better than to equate a choice (often made under some level of misogynistic social coercion) with like, strives to get women in normally male-dominant fields or boost our representation in government or securing our reproductive rights.

#ask #i wonder how many people are reading a lack of nuance into that post lol #not necessarily @ you anon just. ive already had a libfem try to actually fight me on the whole bimbo movement thing #as a personal example: im already tall but i love big ass heels when I have a chance to wear them #the taller the better #i wanna be over six feet #heels are a gender expectation for afab people #there's also the expectation that bc of my height i should lean away from wearing them #its absolutely a personal choice that i frankly love bc ppl always expect women to be short and dainty #do i consider it a feminist thing to wear heels? no #its a ''fuck you'' thing #and a gender expression thing but thats for another post #i covered what I could while running the risk of this being 19 miles long sorry if i missed anything!#long post

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terrence-silver · 2 years

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what would terry do if his beloved asked to sit on his lap do his makeup? would he allow them to?

I think Terry wore make up before.

For fetish-y purposes and just because.

Especially in the 80's, at the height of the whole Glam Rock aesthetic, for example. I think he wore make up. I think he wore silken bathrobes. I think he wore lingerie. Heels. Corsets. Lace up thigh-high boots. Stockings. Leather gloves. Leather in general. Jewelry. Masks. Studs. Smoking out of those long cigar holders as well as the more traditional blunts. He's done it all. He hasn't lose an ounce of his masculinity doing so --- I envision he’s tethered the fine line between manhood and otherness, where the two blur entirely, all while espousing a classically hyper-macho philosophy on strength and mercilessness. Why? Because he’s the maker and breaker of conventions and he controls the narrative and its rules. Also, I think it might just amuse him, how confusing and occasionally disorienting it all is to the senses. I think he’s a chameleon in that sense. In fact, goodness knows what his bedroom and self-expression antics were like throughout life. Some people do such things for the sake of the kink of forced feminization or humiliation, but if anything, I genuinely envision Terry gleefully walking out in his get-up and domming some sub or bedwarmer, towering seven feet in his heels and make up and bearing an aura of even more haughtiness and arrogance than he does usually. He is a vision. He’s powerful. Free. So, when beloved asks to do his make up while sitting on his lap, it isn’t something he hasn’t done before. In fact, I can imagine him smiling. Takes him way, way back.

#oh terry has definitely wore make up #and more #i could talk for days #about him and his identity #and how complex it is #terry silver #kk3 #cobra kai #yandere #terry silver x reader #terry silver x beloved

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1theartofculture · 2 years

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When Will You Fucking Learn.

There’s a visible pattern within the Hip-Hop world. Whether it be by way of substance abuse or gang politics, when an artist of the community dies, his music skyrockets in views, his fanbase increases significantly, his name is made into a hashtag, and he is endorsed as a “Legend”. Despite its constant use, the artists who have been associated with the word “Legend” are not at all suitable for the title. This term is used to describe an individual, who, either in life or death, transformed a certain subject-area. The deaths of rappers such as Juice Wrld, Nipsey Hussle, 2Pac, and Mac Miller brought no change to the conditions which killed them. The normalization of the same ideas, concepts, and mentalities that killed our favorite rappers are still present in Hip-Hop. Selling drugs, burglary, and violence are commonly glorified by mainstream rappers as ways to “get rich quick”. This mentality not only kills our favorite musicians, but they’re also killing us, the Hip-Hop community.

In its prime, Hip-Hop was recognized as a solution to gang-related violence, which reached an ultimate high during the 1970s. The Hip-Hop genre was an instrument used to cope with the misfortune related to being a minority in a predominantly white America. Common themes at the time revolved around black liberation, class struggles, feminism, and anti-racism. Contrary to modern “Hip-Hop”, artists of Golden Age were intent on bettering the lives of their listeners. Today, we see a lyrical routine of the same topics. Musicians would much rather focus on selling the image of a sex-addicted, substance abusing, murderous hoodlum. Do we even have to mention how unrealistic these stereotypes are? No one living in the ghettos is committing crimes for the fucking aesthetic. The exaggerations made in music videos and rap lyrics are not representative of the lifestyle choices of lower-income individuals.

2Pac and Nipsey Hussle, artists who have been considered legendary by many were both affiliated with notorious gangs (2Pac with the Mob Piru Bloods, and Nipsely Hussle with the Rollin 60’s), crews created for the protection and prosperity of its members. This association is what lead to their untimely and unfortunate deaths. The passing of these rappers has been memorialized, but as mentioned earlier, has made no lasting impact on modern rap culture. Gang related activity is still considered “cool”, and the consequences of this relationship are deadly. In the past decade, more than 1,635 teenagers have died due to gang politics. Our children our dying because of some half-assed marketing strategy. As the sub-genre of Rap becomes more hostile, the injuries accessorizing the conflicts among rival gangs increases exponentially.

With the likability of the gangster lifestyle, rap culture only ever focuses on the promotion of crimes including homophobia, sexual misconduct, and addiction. “Gangster” rappers often defend themselves by claiming that they only adapt to this character for the sake of entertainment, like actors in a movie. Though this claim does explain the reasoning behind such an act, it doesn’t excuse the behavior. These personas reinforce unrealistic stereotypes of those in lower-income neighborhoods: uneducated, overly assertive, and ignorant. We aren’t taking drugs for the sake of taking drugs. We aren’t joining gangs for the sake of joining gangs. We aren’t committing crime for the sake of committing crime. We do it to fucking survive. To be portraying such immature, repetitive, and uninformed ideas make these rappers appear unbelievably naïve, socially ignorant, and in general, out of touch with reality.

Music in general shapes our belief system, feelings, attitudes, and morals toward fixed subjects. The more frequently we’re exposed to certain content, the more likely we are to indulge in this described lifestyle. Rap music has been known to normalize the disrespect of women, problematic alcohol use, and argumentative personalities. As a result, those who perceive their favorite rappers as role models, begin to reenact their destructive behaviors. This can be observed in schools, where the suburban kids adapt a “blaccent” as a means to fit in, or at the mall, which has become an epicenter of street harassment. Through all aspects of life, the customs embraced by modern Hip-Hop artists are not just simple marketing strategy, but fucking epedemic.

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aro-comics · 3 years

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Fashion Analysis (Part 5: Aromanticism & Fashion?)

[Note: This post is a part of a series analyzing self-expression, fashion, aromanticism, and how they interact with other parts of identity. For full context please read the whole thing!]

Aromanticism and Fashion?

Now that we have gone through LGBTQ+ History with fashion, and the importance of self expression - I think we’re in a good place with all this context to discuss how aromanticism and fashion can intersect. (and again, as a disclaimer, all of this is purely speculative!).

Personally, I think there may be a few philosophies on how Aromanticism and Fashion may interact. You can look at it a few different ways, either considering the influence amatonormativity may have on our methods of dress, but also the context in which Aromantic communities are forming (online).

On the influence of Amatonormativity

Up until this point I’ve been side-stepping the consideration of amatonormativity – but it does impact self-expression, I think, and it’s worth discussing it’s relation to aromanticism.

I had a discussion with one of my aroace friends about the idea of wanting to avoid “attention” in the romantic and/or sexual sense growing up. There is an inherent tie-in with wanting to appear desirable (as shown in the beginning of the comic, and also reinforced through many pieces of popular media), with romantic outcomes. In both of our experiences, I believe it made the idea of being seen as conforming to beauty norms an uncomfortable activity.

And looking back to lesbian fashion history too, we can see this subversion of heteronormative expectation is tied into a lot of their community’s means of dress. Which leads me to wonder - will we also see this with an emerging Aromantic sense of fashion? How could this impact clothing choice, and general expression as it relates to an amatonormative society?

I want to note that personally, outside of professional contexts, I like to dress femininely in a subversive and “alternative” way. I LOVE the idea of being hyperfeminine as a performance, being a living, breathing, work of art, while simultaneously creating an aesthetic that would not consider “attractive” in an amatonormative context. And another aroace friend has confirmed feeling this way with me too! She mentioned she likes to dress in a way that will make women go “wow, we love this outfit” but at the same time cause *conservative straight old men* go “what are you wearing” (to paraphrase our conversation).

I think some good examples of this from my personal experience would be the following:

1. I love aggressive, graphic liner - generally makeup is thought of as something that feminizes the face, something that softens. But I also like to use it to create the angles and shapes that adorn my face, something abstract for the sake of being beautiful. Like mentioned before, I don’t want to appear romantically attractive to anyone, and I think that for me, at least, this is a part of using femininity to subvert these expectations.

2. I love ethereal-looking, avant-garde sheer dresses, not in the sense that they could be romanticized, but in the way they again make me feel detached from the idea of beauty for the sake of appealing to anyone else. Instead, for me it feels like beauty as a wild, untameable form of nature and being.

But … maybe I should mention the unconventional tastes are partially tied to the fact I spend a lot of time in creative spaces because of my degree, and overall I am exposed to more diverse ranges of self-expression to begin with! Either way, though, I am curious what other aros have to say, so feel free to let me know your experiences with this. I’d love to provide an update with thoughts from other aros!

Forming Community Online and its Possible Impacts

The online nature of the development of Aro Culture leads me to wonder if this medium of interaction will influence the development of our fashion, much like how it influences the development of fashion overall. For example, with tiktok, the app is often credited for its major influence on modern fashion trends (and leading to the emergence of microtrends).

Most visual designs are being affected by the way social media algorithms work too. The “allegria style” created by facebook, otherwise known as the “flat gangly limbed drawing style beloved by tech companies”, has exploded in popularity. Regardless of how one might feel about the widespread adoption of this style of illustration, it’s clear that it has significant advantages that have led to its popularity, one of which is its ability to be “consumed” or visually understood at high speed due to its graphic nature and simple design. Basically, when people look at things on their phones, and they’re scrolling quickly, they’re more likely to understand what they see and interact with what they see if it’s easy to visually “read”. And I truly believe that this is influencing most forms of design, including fashion (which subsequently, will influence aro fashion). If you’d like to learn more about this subject, sources 14, 15, and 16 provide more insight into how social media algorithms have influenced design and visual culture at large.

I think another factor to consider here is the effect of seeing the whole world at once - having the influence of all different media, visuals, and pop culture at the same time has created a very unique environment for development. As one example, the wider aspec communities have developed with the existence of our flags (which are purple and green centered for ace and aro respectively). This would be knowledge that wouldn’t be so easily spread through the whole community in a pre-internet era, and I personally (THIS IS ONLY MY THEORY) feel this is part of the reason there is a far stronger connection to these colours within aspec culture. It’s something that unifies us and was one of our first introductions to the community (since most of us probably looked up the definition of aromantic, or asexual, online), and I think for this reason these colours hold special significance and are present in a lot of of our means of self expression and communication with other members of our community.

Obviously, the formation of symbols and ways of self-identification will occur anyway (many symbols exist for other members of the LGBTQ+ community too), but I do think being online has a particular influence on the ways community symbols are communicated, and create a different context in where these cultural symbols take shape.

[Note from Author: For Part 6, click here!]

#NotAComic #Fashion #FashionAnalysis

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susandsnell · 4 years

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There's something kinda scary seeing so many white feminists buy, hook line and sinker, into Midsommar being this empowering #girlboss movie about cathartically getting rid of your abuser... while forgetting how the cult she's joining are OPENLY RACIST AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS

Yeah?? Like the thing is Midsommar is top-tier horror because it fails to be just one thing and thrives on its own moral ambiguities.

On one level, it is a narrative of sublimating your grief (an especially gendered expectation for women who are already seen as hysterical and overemotional) for the sake social acceptance versus the need to have the ugliest parts of yourself not only acknowledged, but empathized with. On another, it’s about the catharsis of a breakup. You want Dani to get away from her lousy relationship. And you want her to have the support and family she needs so badly but has lost. You want her to be heard and listened to, even if all that come out of her are those horrid, tortured screams that can only come from that deepest part of grief. You want to see her comforted, both physically and emotionally. And you want a bit of vengeance for her with what a supreme jerk Christian is. It’s also a wildly funny (and validating!) condemnation of academia and the types you encounter there, and the alternate entitlement and heavy relativism of grad students. On this level, the allegory is an extreme one for toxic situations.

But on another level, it’s also about what happens when the wrong people get a wind of your vulnerability and meet your needs in order to gain power over you. Dani is obviously scouted and chosen from the very first by Pelle and the cult because she has all the qualities they prize - emotional/psychological fragility wrapped up in a package of pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Her whiteness and Aryan-ness, compared to especially the people of colour who form the tour group, afford her the best treatment by the cult. And even then, what they do to her is nothing short of gaslighting and literal torture! For all that they praise her as their queen, she has no agency! On top of which, Christian’s fate is disproportionate considering his crimes are just...being a dick. As for the other members of the group, they’re specifically dealt with by the Harga in intensely racialized ways far worse than what befalls any of the white members. Even the pretty aesthetics hearken to the seductive propaganda of Nazis/Neo-Nazis; the idealized pastoral scene, the blondes in pretty floral gowns, the romanticized Nordic Pagan traditions.

Ari Aster is an Ashkenazi Jewish man. He knew exactly what the fuck he was doing when he chose to set his film in Northern Europe in an Aryan-ideal cult. His Jewishness is all over the film, not just in the overal anxiety, but specifically in the deep trauma and terror associated with a wide variety of European societies in which we have been forcibly Othered, the idealization of said societies, and the horrors our people have endured across that continent, time and again, since the very beginning. When talking about the film, he spoke about his chief inspiration being the ease with which vulnerable people are drawn into white supremacist groups.

The Harga might carry the aesthetics of femininity, but this is precisely part of the deal - cults will always draw someone in with innocuous and appealing imagery, particularly in fulfilling that which they feel they’re lacking. In Dani’s case, the loss of a sister in particular, and the suffocating patriarchal control of her boyfriend made her the perfect victim who’d go running into the arms of sweet, understanding, beautiful women. The fact remains however that their arms were open to her because she looked and thought like her. If she looked like Connie, or if Connie had just been through the same traumatic losses, neither would have been picked to be May Queen.

Dani did not need the Harga, she needed serious therapy and good, supportive friends (like her female friend she called on the phone towards the beginning). She could’ve left Christian without having to become the plaything of white supremacists. Her smile isn’t a triumph - Florence Pugh herself says she’s so psychologically broken that she has no clue what she’s even looking at when the temple goes up in flames. Feminism? I think not.

#midsommar

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fae-fucker · 3 years

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Zenith: Chapter 76-79

Chapter 76

Andi has a nice little poetic nightmare. It’s irrelevant. The next morning has the girls preparing for the ball, complete with dresses and makeup.

Some things to note include Lira saying that in Adhiran religion (which is global, I guess), one has to mourn for three days before “letting” the souls of the dead pass on into ... everything.

Andi tries to say that it’ll take time to heal from it all, but Lira is having none of it.

“It will take time to move past what happened on Adhira,” Andi started, but Lira held up a hand.

“My three days of mourning have passed. Lon’s and my aunt’s, too. Now we, and the others who lost loved ones during the attack, must give the lost spirits to the stars, to the trees, to the wind.”

Which basically means that she’s done feeling bad about the unexpected and brutal attack on her home planet, so that’s convenient. Well, if one of our main characters doesn’t care about her people getting senselessly murdered, then why should we?

She also lets us know that her aunt has fixed up the Marauder and brought it here, because of course. Lira wants to arrange for Lon to be transferred to the Marauder, and though she has a logical reason for it (taking him home personally), it’s only a setup so we know why he’s on there at the end of the book when Andi’s bleeding out and needs a universal donor.

Spoilers, I guess.

Andi’s mother, Glorya, intercepts Andi as she tries to leave her crew to their makeover montages, just so we can move into a scene where her mom is brushing her hair and babbling on about gossip and vapid high society stuff.

But Andi, of course, gets lost in a flashback that’s so amateurishly written it’s honestly embarrassing and only highlights Shinsay’s helpless reliance on flashbacks as a storytelling device.

Observe:

Her words faded away as memories took their place. Andi lost herself to them.

The whole flashback is written in italics for some inexplicable reason, even though it would’ve been fine as just regular text since we’re clearly told what’s happening now and what’s a memory.

Also, there’s one bit where the memory “fast-forwards” to a different one. Shinsay, this isn’t a fucking movie. This isn’t a screenplay. What the fuck are you DOING.

The flashback and the mother’s inane babbling are all there to illustrate how vapid and brainless Glorya is and how she only ever cared about her status and not about her kid. Glorya pretends that everything is back to the way it was but Andi curses her out for abandoning her when she needed them most and how “the way it was” was actually always shit.

I mean it’s fine. It’s all right. I see what they’re going for, it’s melodramatic as all fuck but it works for what they’re trying to do? I can see this as being a realistic way for an emotionally neglectful family to look like. I wish it was more nuanced and wasn’t just shoe-horned in here (Glorya doesn’t show up before or after this bit, this is the only time she’s ever present or even mentioned in this book in any meaningful capacity) for the sake of making Andi’s friends look better and for her to not have anything that anchors her to Arcardius, but like, I won’t say this isn’t realistic.

And then Shinsay can’t stop themselves and it’s back to silly time:

“Really, Androma...”

[...]

“That is not my name,” Andi whispered. She allowed the darkness to come up into her voice, the mask of shadow and steel to sweep across her face. “My name is the Bloody Baroness. And if you or Commander Racella ever so much as utter a single word toward me or my crew again, I will personally strip the skin from your body and wave it like a flag from my starship.”

Glorya let out a soft squeak. Andi snarled with all of her teeth.

Guys I can’t breathe this is too fucking funny. And not in a good “woo vindication!” sort of way, but in a “they really put this right after an emotional confrontation about parental emotional neglect/abuse huh?” way. They really thought this was ... badass? Revenge? Andi, sweetie, you’re, like, traumatized? Presumably? I can’t really tell. But maybe get some therapy?

Do Shinsay think this is somehow a win and that Andi’s threat means she’s fully released from the hurt and pain her parents have caused her through their neglect? It’s honestly written as if Andi just confronted her mother and her own hopes of coming back to her family in this one short scene, and then upon realizing her parents never loved her, she scares her mom a little and then is all smug and satisfied at the end.

That ain’t how it works, darlings.

Then the annoying Marketable Space Pet runs in and starts biting Glorya’s toes and she runs away shrieking like a defeated Disney villain.

Way to undercut your own drama, Shinsay.

The chapter ends with Andi thinking about how her crew is her True Family for the bajillionth time. Because we’re all idiots and Shinsay wants us to remember that.

Chapter 77

It’s the evening of the ball and Andi thinks about how she missed Bavista, which is apparently your generic coming-of-age ball held at Arcardius for every 16-year-old. I’m guessing it’s a yearly thing? The book never clarifies. Not sure why the fuck it’s here tbh.

Actually, it’s a pretty good demonstration of how the worldbuilding in this book is presented so here, have at thee:

She could still remember seeing the otherworldly dresses and suits float by her on the feeds as she watched the girls and boys glide into the A’Vianna House in the Glass Sector. They seemed light as air, full of pride, bursting at the seams with excitement. Once inside, they would be greeted by members of the Priest Guild, who would award each young person three items.

The first was a vial of water from the Northern Ocean, symbolizing strength. For growth, they accepted a single leaf from the oldest tree on Arcardius, known as The Mother, which was said to have been planted when the Ancients first arrived. Lastly, they were given a single floating pebble, no larger than a child’s fingernail, chiseled from the very gravarock where the Cortas estate was. It represented the wisdom of rising above.

Is this relevant to anything? Does this help you understand this world or its inhabitants? Does it tell you anything of the culture of Arcardius or its youth and what’s expected of them? No? It’s just a really generic list of things thrown together using Mystical Proper Nouns as glue? Weeell heeell.

Also what does “it represented the wisdom of rising above” mean? This is utterly generic and means fuck-all, that’s what.

Anyway, Andi’s admiring herself in the mirror. Her dress is very sexy, trust me, I can’t be bothered to include it so just imagine your favorite My Immortal outfit description. It does include sword holsters at the back, which are Andi’s favorite part, because she’s a strong independent woman who don’t need no man. She never actually uses them or brings the swords to the ball so ... Idk what the point of this was.

We also get some shit about how Andi actually LOVES dresses and being pretty but she never admitted it to anyone. But don’t you worry, this badass space criminal LOVES all things girly, because that’s feminism! Can someone check in on Shinsay? I’m not sure they’re getting enough air with their heads so far up Sarah J Maas’ asshole.

Admitting to herself that she looked pretty was something Andi kept private. She didn’t want to give her crew the satisfaction of knowing her true thoughts about fashion. How even though she was a fierce, hardened criminal, she could still appreciate the joy of a beautiful, impractical ball gown.

Huh. And here I thought they were your family. That’s weird that you’d keep this information from them, especially considering all of them seemed pretty excited to be prettied up in the last chapter. I guess they’d really just haaate the idea of sharing this joy with their captain, huh? Why aren’t you admitting this to them, Andi?

You’re saying shit about how “even though” you’re a hardened criminal, you can “still” appreciate beautiful gowns, like those two are somehow contradictory. Are you, mayhaps, ashamed of having this traditionally girly interest? Hmm! Interesting. Why could that be, I wonder? Why would having traditionally feminine interests or even caring about one’s appearance be seen as something inherently shameful or embarrassing, as inherently contradictory to being fierce and “hardened?”

This is all just so *clenches fist* feminist.

Forreal though, somehow Shinsay managed to take their entire made up GALAXY and make it subtly and not-so-subtly sexist. Good job, morons. Really girlbossed that one, huh?

The only bit I like about this whole mess is this:

The dressmaker had also accented her gown with a sparkling necklace full of jewels that Andi didn’t plan on giving back.

This is the one and only space pirate-y thing Andi does -- sorry, considers doing -- in the whole book and honestly could’ve been used to build her character more, but it’s just a one-off joke here. Wasted.

Valen comes to fetch her and we get some subtle foreshadowing.

“Valen the Resurrected.”

He stopped to look at her, brows raised. “What?”

She shrugged. “It’s what the press is calling you in all the feeds.” Valen let out a deep chuckle.

[...]

“Something tells me things are about to change for the better,” he said. “I’m ready to see it all happen.”

Andi wondered what he would do now that he was home with a whole planet at his disposal.

He deserved to have some fun.

Is it bad that I’m rooting for Valen to destroy everything? And this isn’t my villain-fucker coming out, I just want this poor bastard to absolutely annihilate Andi and her gang of acolytes.

Chapter 78

Andi and Valen arrive at the ball. It’s all very pretty and space-y and aesthetic. There’s a bunch of aliens everywhere. Andi sees a woman with funky eyes and assumes it’s a body mod, because I guess she knows the genetic characteristics of every species by heart and can tell when something is real or not.

An old classmate of theirs comes up to talk to Valen and congratulate him on being alive, then Andi reminds him of who she is just to be a smug asshole and the guy fucks off in a panic. She’s just so cool and badass, you guys.

Then it’s time for Valen and Andi to dance, and of course General Cortas looks like he’s about to lose his marbles because these darn kids! >:(

The chapter ends on Andi noticing Dex pouting in the distance.

“Relax,” Andi whispered. “Let’s give them something to talk about.”

She flashed him a wicked grin as the music began.

And as Valen spun her into the first move of the dance, Andi saw Dex standing on the fringes of the crowd, an expression of longing clear on his face.

Chapter 79

This chapter is exactly 298 words of Dex moping around about how he’s actually not over Andi at all when he thought he’d done such a good job of repressing his feelings, and how he should be the one dancing with Andi instead of Valen. If you’re surprised, you’re clinically dead.

#eff reads: zenith

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doc-tot · 3 years

Text

The Boys (Amazon Prime) has all the aesthetic components to just be a shallow violence fest of suffocating testerone aimed to appeal to straight white males, but the thing is it’s not.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s plenty bloody and downright gruesome at times, but it deals with heavy themes and important issues like corporate greed, corruption from absolute power, sexual harassment/assault, addiction, grief, revenge, feminism, human trafficking, identity, and more in a way that isn’t just cheap porn for the male gaze, even though almost all its marketing makes it seem that way, even right down to its name, The Boys. And all the while it’s still a fun, action-filled, blood-pumping, over the top show full of badass characters.

All this is to say, there really is no excuse for show creators to skip out on giving their actions shows and movies more depth for the sake of avoiding being “boring”

#the boys #the boys amazon #billy butcher #starlight #homelander #amazon prime

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larktb-archive · 3 years

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Hi! I'm too shy to come off anon, but I need your help understanding something. I hope I'm not bothering you!!

I don't want to interact with anyone who is a fascist, but I'm not entirely sure what makes someone fascist. Can you please explain it to me?

I know I could look it up myself, but I know that not all definitions online can be correct and I just want your perspective;;

Thanks!

Hi anon! Well, fascism comes in many forms so “sussing out who’s a fascist” is technically a little harder to do than having a simple checklist. After all, doesn’t a White Supremacist have different beliefs to a Japanese fascist? And doesn’t a Japanese fascist have different beliefs to a Wahabist? These beliefs clash don’t they? Well, yes and no. Sure the surface level beliefs are different but the underlying core beliefs of these groups are actually quite similar; it’s the specifics which are different. Even though it isn’t a “bible” on what is fascism and shouldn’t be taken as gospel, Umberto Eco has an essay called “Ur-Fascism” which contains 14 points, which can help us identify whether certain beliefs are fascist no matter the specifics of their belief system. I’ll explain the points in short and give some examples. Quick disclaimer, I am not an expert on fascism or any of the ideologies I’ll discuss by any means so if you aren’t taking Umberto Eco’s writing as the 100% correct truth, definitely don’t take mine as that either (this is how you should treat most sources tho):

1. Cult of Tradition and 2. Rejection of modernity

I put these two together because they’re kind of inseparable. This is basically the idea that there was a “glorious past” that people need to return to and modernity is a corruption of that “glorious past”. In British fascist thought, this past is generally the 19th century at the zenith of the British Empire or mid-20th century Britain. The latter is more common for people who wish to be a little more PC with their writings; instead of trying to use a by-gone era that pretty much no one alive can remember, they use a much more recent time with nostalgic ideas of “the good old days” which doesn’t seem threatening on it’s surface but is dogwhistling for a time when there weren’t as many immigrants in the country.

You may have seen the “reject modernity, embrace tradition” meme and it’s pretty much the most obvious incarnation of this idea. Similarly you may seen people online use “degenerate” as an insult. If you look at the meaning of the degenerate it means “having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline”; it’s microcosm of these ideas put into a single insult. This is why you tend to see conservatives use it more than progressives.

I’d also argue that terfs obsession with 2nd wave feminism and their utter rejection of intersectionality and modern feminism is another manifestation of this idea.

3. Action for actions sake

This is less detectable in terms of individuals but still important to note that these people tend to support action without a cause. Sure the insurrection at the white house earlier this year was action, but it had no substance behind it. It was action for actions sake, which is why any principled leftist didn’t support it. Fascists will tend to openly just call for action but won’t be very specific about the purposes of the action; as long as they agree with the ideology behind it they’ll support it. It’s why fascists love harassment campaigns and mindless acts of terror. Take Wahabist terrorist orgs like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, it doesn’t matter if bombing an Ariana Grande concert has no point, the only point is the action itself.

4. Disagreement is treason

This one’s pretty self explanatory, they will ostracize you if you disagree with them. Again, terfs tend to do this, and I had a long conversation with an ex-terf I called a dumbass, who basically said that she was ostracized by them and mocked for having different beliefs (hope she’s doing well actually). There’s numerous stories from ex-terfs like this.

5. Fear of difference

There’s a tendency for fascists to group people into “us” and “them”. “They” are considered to be intruders who need to be removed whereas “we” are the people who deserve to be here because it is “our” right to be here. In Zulu Nationalism, this tends to be any non-Zulu speakers who they deem to be “Shangaan” even if they aren’t actually Tsonga, it’s just a pejorative at this point. If you see vague references to the “elite” without any reference to who they are and what makes them “elite”, this is tends to be a dogwhistle for Jewish people. Western Fascists have very little issue with the workings of capitalism itself or the accumulation of wealth by capitalists, they just don’t like “them”, taking “our” stuff. Any references to “us” and “them” is pretty much a red flag.

6. Appeal to Social Frustration

Fascists will tend to brush upon actual issues faced by the poor today but will instead blame it on an outside force. You’ll see job loss being blamed on immigrants or vague “elites”. Terfs do this too. They’ll see young girls who are genuinely struggling with patriarchal issues and divert all that pent up rage towards trans people and the “q*eers” (which they do tend to use as a slur unlike what most people would have you think).

7. Obsession with a Plot

Everything is a conspiracy! The election was rigged! 9/11 was fake! that fucking pizza place/this furniture company is a sex ring! All of these are supposedly plots by the deep state who are trying to do... something or other. You’ll notice these “Plots” don’t actually have a purpose, but the fact that there is a plot itself is the issue. This is a way of engendering paranoia in the group while also feeling that there is a constant war against you even if there isn’t. This is also why, despite news sources being pro-capitalist the right will swear up and down it’s leftist media which is controlled by “them” (usually just meaning Jewish people).

8. The enemy is both strong and weak

“Trans people have infiltrated academia and the only reason people refuse to see gender as an immutable biological concept, is because they’re too afraid of the trans cabal to say anything. But also everyone can tell trans people are crazy and haha you have a high suicide rate.” It’s contradictory that’s the point. They need to feel that they’re both counterculture but also they need to be winning at all times so that contradiction is necessary. Also the use of the word “cabal” is a pretty big red flag for all forms of fascism.

9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy, 10. Contempt for the weak, 11. Everybody is educated to become a hero and 12. Machismo and weaponry

All of these are kind of interrelated so I’m grouping them together (also this is already fucking long as hell so I don’t wanna bore you any further). You’ll tend to see a love for the military or at least military aesthetics when looking through fascist blogs. Guns aren’t just a tool for fascists, they’re representative of masculinity and the necessity of violence. Pacifists and anyone who refuses to fight are weak and therefore are “degenerate”. If you do not fight, if you are not willing to fight, you cannot be a “hero” (an ubermensch or a matyr). This comes with the fetishization of violence instead of the recognition of violence being an means to an end, and the worship of individuals rather than of communities and organizations. Take Japanese fascists and their lionisation of the imperial military and their desire to once again have an actual army.

Terfs don’t necessarily fit these roles except for arguably 10 considering how much they seem to look down upon the mentally ill and those who commit suicide and surprisingly 11 since that involves the hatred of non-standard sexual activities and terfs hate non-standard sex (this is from the most vanilla bitch who is very uncomfortable with kink but understands its not inherently good or bad). I have a feeling this is more so because terfs are mainly women (there are male terfs ofc) whereas this was written for male led organizations.

13. Selective populism

When fascists talk about “the people” they tend to mean “the people we like”. “The working class” can be translated to “this cishet white christian man from Minnesota who owns land but hey he lives in a rural area so he’s working class right?”. They’ll also tend to have “tokens” who will suddenly become the mouth piece of the entire community they’re supposedly representing even if no one in the community asked them to (i.e. Milo Yiannopoulos).

14. Ur fascism speaks Newspeak

They speak in terms which are both inaccessible to anyone outside of their circles whilst being so simple that once you learn them it becomes easy to understand. They abhor any form of “academic” speech so you’ll rarely see them source things (unless those things happen to agree with their views, which is rare but Jordan Peterson is popular for a reason) and if they do source things they probably wouldn’t have read them fully and will rely on you also not reading them. This is to limit any critical thinking so that your brain is basically jellified into an unquestioning organ which only responds “yes” or “no” and only appeals to a higher authority without any form of reasoning involved. This is why they complain about “the lefts memes being too wordy”... because they’re used to not having to read (this is somewhat tongue in cheek but heyho if the boot fits).

And that’s the 14 main features of fascism, if anyone is displaying multiple of these ideas then they are most likely fascist, and if an organization or group continuously replicates these ideas, then they are definitely fascist. I hope this wasn’t too long but like I said... very complex topic. (Also hopefully this is written well, it’s 10 PM and I am surviving off Irn Bru energy drink). Hope this helped!

#long post #lillypad.txt #ask away #Anon

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fictionadventurer · 3 years

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Have you seen the new little women movie? If so what do you think of it?

My initial thoughts on the movie are here. I just rewatched it for the sake of answering this ask. My thoughts can be summarized as follows:

This is a beautiful movie. So much loving focus on the things and the textures. The clothes are extremely Pinterest-and-Hallmark-movie aesthetic rather than anything remotely resembling history, but it’s hard to mind when every character is wearing three different textures and patterns at all times and giving the eye so much to look at. (Also, I was knitting during rewatch, so the knitwear was especially satisfying).

But I’m still not sure it succeeds as a story. Much like the outfits, there are so many different bits and pieces layered together, with different textures and colors that make it interesting to look at, but I’m not sure they come together into a coherent whole. Individual scenes could be good, but it was hard to connect emotionally to any of the characters when the backstory was chopped up into so many pieces.

I found it easier to differentiate between the past and the present this time--I finally figured out that the golden light is for childhood and the blue light is for adulthood. Noticing that also made me like the ending more, which I’ll get to later.

I liked the dancing scenes a bit less. They were a little less joyful and emotionally uplifting than I remembered. I did find it interesting how Jo and Laurie’s dance at their first meeting turns into a sort of silent film for part of it, until Meg intrudes and brings them back into the real world by telling them about her hurt ankle.

I liked the Meg and John story less. Emma Watson just doesn’t seem very motherly or wifely. However, the ending scene of the silk subplot was very touching and one of the few scenes in the movie that showed the self-giving side of marriage.

I still wish there had been more focus on the virtue development part of the plot--the “Meg falls to vanity” scene falls kind of flat because Laurie is just scolding her for...wearing a fancy dress? In a way that makes it seem like he’s just scolding her for being feminine and liking pretty things. We don’t have the context to make it clear that she’s bending her morals for the sake of being liked. The scene does set up a contrast between Laurie-the-moral-guardian and Laurie-living-a-life-of-vain-pleasure in the very next scene, but it’s not enough to make the Vanity Fair scene work on its own.

And why didn’t the movie have more of Mr. March? Let us see the marriage that has shaped the girls’ ideas of what marriage is supposed to be.

I found it interesting that the devoted spinster Aunt March who believes in marriage as a purely economic concern rejected offers to enter Meg’s wedding dance twice. She keeps herself but missed out on the joy.

I found Amy and Laurie slightly more believable as a couple. Though when Amy has the struggle of “marry for financial gain or marry for love”, it’s rather too convenient that the resolution is that she decides she’s really in love with a different rich guy than the one she was going to marry solely for his money.

Beth was a lesser character than I remembered (both in terms of screen time and emotional impact). However, I did like her role in the story far more because she’s kind of key to some of the themes (which I’ll get to in a moment).

I still hate Jo changing her mind about Laurie. It makes her choice of Bhaer seem like she’s settling for second-best.

Now’s the point where I’m going to talk about the themes and the ending. Which was the primary reason I wanted a rewatch--to clarify my ideas about this movie’s message and resolution.

SPOILERS AHEAD. FAIR WARNING TO ANYONE WHO HAS NOT ALREADY BEEN FRIGHTENED AWAY BY THIS WALL OF TEXT.

This movie is about three things: Marriage, Art and Money. Money is necessary to survive. Marriage and art can both be a source of money, but they are also pursuits that should be entered into out of love.

This movie harps and harps upon the fact that marriage is an economic proposition. It’s the most stable way for a woman to get money. She also gets love, ideally. But where the movie falters is focusing so much on the getting part of marriage and rarely on the giving. Laurie wanted to marry Jo because he wanted to get her love. Jo’s “I’m so lonely” scene specifically has her say that she wants to be loved, but not to love--she wants to receive rather than give. I’m not sure there’s any indication that either Jo or Laurie ever give or give up anything when they finally do enter into matrimony. It seems that they just get who they decide they want. Amy gets a rich husband and gets a man who loves her, but what does she ever give up for him, aside from another man who she also did nothing to love?

The silk scene with Meg and John is one of the few times where we see a married couple giving to each other, rather than focusing on what they get out of it.

Art, too, is a love that can be turned toward money, and most of the characters have this out of balance as well. Jo loves writing, but she wants to be seen as good, and she mostly cares about the money that she gets out of it. Amy gives up art completely when she realizes she’s not a genius. “I’d rather be great or nothing” is the exact opposite of doing art for the love of it--what she cared about was getting praise rather than giving something of herself to the world.

Beth is the only one who understands the giving nature of both love and art. She performs for no one’s praise or payment--she plays because she loves music. She’s the one who gives up her time to bring the donations to the Hummels when her sisters are caught up in their own pursuits. When she gets the piano, her sisters are the ones who are caught up in admiring it as a thing, but she runs off (without any of her sisters even noticing, too caught up in the wealth in front of them) to thank Mr. Lawrence because she recognized the love behind the gift.

Jo starts to understand the importance of love within art after Beth dies. We have the lovely scene of Beth encouraging Jo to do her writing for someone--give of her art. When Jo returns to her writing, the camera beautifully focuses on the For Beth at the head of the manuscript--Jo is not writing this for money or praise, but out of love for her sister.

I like the ending much better than I did before. I can see the golden sunlit ending as the “real” end of the story, because I noticed the lighting trick. When Bhaer is leaving the March house, Jo is standing in the blue light, but Bhaer is in the golden light. It’s as if Jo sees that a life with him could provide the same level of happiness that she knew in childhood.

It’s still odd that her family has to convince her every step of the way that she’s “in love”. But because of the lighting trick, I can more easily believe that she really did want to spend her life with him.

That dumb scene with the publisher is what ruins everything. We had Jo writing her book out of love. We had Jo deciding to give Bhaer a reason to stay. But it’s derailed by this weird focus on money. Jo keeps insisting that she’s “selling” her heroine into marriage, and that she’s willing to sacrifice her artistic vision just because this ending is what sells. I feel like if they’d cut out all that stuff about the contract negotiation--which seems only to have been put in because Gerwig wanted to show off this bit of trivia about Alcott’s business acumen--the ending would have been a million times more coherent on a plot and thematic level.

I can believe that the sunlit ending at Plumfield is Jo reaching happiness by giving of herself to others. Everyone is using art to give to others--Bhaer is teaching music, Laurie’s teaching some kind of drama class, Amy’s teaching painting.

The shot of the gold leaf being stamped onto the cover of Little Women, which had seemed like the final stroke saying “this ending is fiction” now seems to be saying that “this is the way the story really ends.” It’s helped by the fact that after Jo gets the book in her hands, we cut to the image of a group of little girls playing pretend--it’s Jo being satisfied in her book not because it’s her achievement or a source of money, but because she knows it will inspire another generation of little girls. Thus we can have Jo achieving artistic and personal fulfillment by publishing the book and teaching at Plumfield.

If it wasn’t for that contract negotiation scene, there wouldn’t even be a question of what the real ending was supposed to be. There’s only one version that shows Jo prioritizing the giving part of art and marriage over any selfish gain, and I hate that the ending muddles it so badly for the sake of misplaced meta-feminism.

#little women #little women 2019 #answered asks

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moon-yean · 3 years

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could u elaborate what was so bad about the barbarians? i saw the show and thought it was ok but i don't have enough knowledge to know what are the ideological implications of it? sorry, just really curious and wanna learn more

*takes a deep breath* oh boy, where to even begin? Thanks for your question as I might finally get this off my chest! Okay, fair’s fair, anyone who likes the show should look away now because I’m not going to mince words. And I want to reiterate that there were things about the show that I liked, mostly on a superficial aesthetical level. Generally you could tell from the get-go though that the writers are hacks who know nothing about history or good storytelling for that matter. I could’ve dealt with a show that was historically inaccurate if only the character drama had been written well. I might also have enjoyed the show more if the character drama had been mediocre but if there had been a sense of historical authenticity (not accuracy, mind; but still something tangibly more substantial than the patina they tried to throw onto their frankly embarrassingly lowbrow attempt by having parts of the dialogue translated into Latin by an expert and by hiring a good crew for the costume and props design - of the Romans at least... putting lipstick on a pig and all that, although pigs are great and the writing here is not).

Since you asked about the ideological implications specifically, I’ll start with that and work my way towards other criticisms (this is going to be LONG):

19th century nationalism: The story of Arminius and his merry band of brothers who defy the big bad Roman empire is a narrative that became especially popular in Germany in the 18th and 19th century, both with liberal patriotic movements that were advocating for the unification of the “German cultural nation” in a modern nation state (spurred by the Wars of Liberation against Napoléon Bonaparte and French occupation) and later with the völkisch movements where that nationalism segued into the pseudo-scientific racial ‘theories’ of a ‘superior German race’ which in turn was part of the ideological foundation of the genocides and atrocities committed by Germany in the 20th century (not only in WWII, see also the colonial genocide of the Herero in 1904). We cannot disentangle this predominantly racist reception history that re-invented Arminius (”Hermann der Cherusker” - “Hermann the Cheruscan” - or, indeed “Hermann the German” ha!) as the founding myth of a German people from the way this story has been depicted in media, entertainment and culture and, as evidenced by Barbarians, continues to be to this day.

Barbarians pays lip service to the fact that actually there was no German people at the time by having the tribes meet at the Ting in the first episode and have someone outright state it. These kinds of tidbits literally voiced by characters give off a strong whiff of the authors googling something, reading something on Wikipedia, and then putting it in there. I’m sorry (actually not sorry) to come down harsh on this but given what we’re talking about here, that’s just not good enough. It’s an embarrassing level of “writing”. The authors clearly have NO idea what they’re talking about or what they’re dealing with because despite their lip services, they actively reproduce the harmful narratives that were spun around this actual historical event and these actual historical figures in the 19th century. No effort was made to depict anything complex or realistic here. Case in point: Even though there’s a pretense that the tribes aren’t part of the same people, they don’t look much different from each other, they all speak the same kind of modern high German that sounds like they’re at a costume party in the year of our lord 2020 (and in the case of Folkwin, drugged out of their mind; he sounds like a guy who’d throw beer cans at passersby). They come across as basically just being separated by the few acres between their villages. And then when the big bad evil Roman empire wants to squash their resistance (Asterix did it better change my mind challenge), freedom fighter Arminius rallies them together with a heroic speech and they charge at the Romans RAAHWWHR! ... no, just no.

There would have been SO MANY ways to reframe and retell this story in a fresh, new, and exciting way that would have made for amazing character drama. The premise is so good. If we were to look at the basics of what is known, there are so many personal AND political complexities in there that just beg to be coloured in with a little imagination. I just... I don’t even know where to begin to fix the choices that the show did go with since most of them don’t make any sense, don’t contribute anything to the narrative and are just. there. Have y’all noticed that there is ZERO dramatic tension in any of the scenes? Like, what? How?? Culture clash, divided loyalties, identity issues, the way that a militaristic upbringing might warp the mind, feelings of home and belonging and displacement, the return of the lost son, the betrayal of a high-ranking officer, just, there are so many themes that the show could have focused on but it botches all of them, nothing of it feels real, earned, or logical. Characters behave in idiotic ways for the sake of the plot (I wanted to like Thusnelda, I really did, I’m always here for female characters but she was so painfully obviously written by 3 dudes who thought that feminism = praying to the good sisters of the forest and slashing your face aöldksfaökdjf plus the actress could not sell any of it, she sounded ridic).

I’m exhausted just thinking about the many ways in which the writing on the show sucked. Impaired character used as a symbol~ for other characters instead of being a character on his own? Check. Weird mystical shit? Check. Earthbound tribal people who are one with nature? Check. Death on the cross to get that Christian imagery in there? Check. Lack of female characters except feisty!badass!Thusnelda, scheming!conniving!pulling-the-strings!wife, weird!mystical!seer? Check. Varus doing a Herod by demanding first-borns to up the Christian persecuted ante? Check. (All he was missing was the mustache to twirl. Was he even a character? He looked vaguely concerned and sceptical. That was his character.)

Look, the actor Arminius was great but even he couldn’t make sense of any of it. The character work was so shoddy, it was shocking. One minute he’s still all-in with the Romans, ordering lashes for “German” mercenaries without being very conflicted about it, reminiscing with fellow Roman soldiers about the good old times in some fireside bonding, asking his foster father to go home to Rome, and then when bad!dad is like “lol no” (surely they would have had that convo before??? surely Arminius would have known how far his career could go???), Arminius turns around and goes “let’s kill 3 Roman legions!! I’M MAD!!” ... lmao dude, just...

Another favourite of mine: The romance between Thusnelda and Folkwin is supposed to be illicit and against her social status. Does anyone even notice? Does anybody even care? Why did the writers come up with Folkwin in the first place? (His name Folkwin Wolfspeer is a hoot and an embarassment in itself. I wonder whether they used some kind of Germanic name generator. They certainly did use a generic speech generator for the battle speech Arminius gives in the last episode lol)

Back to the topic of a lack of tension. Of course there can’t be any tension if the characters suck. But it’s also because of the design of the scenes and plot points. The cliffhangers are so telegraphed and artificially constructed, it’s almost hilarious. My “favourite” has got to be the one of the first episode: The “hi dad” one. Not only does Arminius go to the village with other Romans in tow who then disappear because nothing in this show makes sense but this kind of revelation also goes against everything we know about good storytelling. There’s a famous quote by Hitchcock and I’ll quote it in full because I think it absolutely applies here (and it is valid for character tension as much as it is for suspense):

There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

I hope you can see what I mean here. Barbarians continuously springs surprises on its audience but it has absolutely no tension/suspense in any of its scenes. The only time where the show even comes close to having any kind of genuinely dramatic moment is the conversation between Arminius and Varus where Arminius tries to hide his hurt and disappointment, and all the emotion in that scene is completely due to the actor since the dialogue is fairly idiotic for what is supposed to be the turning moment. Let’s go back to the basics and imagine what the show could have done differently, even allowing for the way in which the writers wanted to tell it (which, as I mentioned, is not appropriately sensitized to the misappropriation of the material in the past - but even if we go with THAT kind of freedom fighter / lost child narrative, it ought to be done well). And here now follows my actual essay of grievances:

The premise of the story, in as much as we know from history, is amazing: An officer of the Roman army, delivered to the Romans by his tribe as a child, returns to the "country" of his birth as part of the invading Roman army which oppresses the natives of the lands. He switches sides, unites different tribes and leads them to a decisive victory against the Roman army in a battle in a forest that lasted for several days and was cleverly planned by the "Germans" who end up outsmarting the Romans who are victims of ambush and the terrain, being split up and stumbling through the forest exhausted and without finding a way back to the other troops (love that the show as we have it managed to squeeze in the cliché "two armies standing on opposing sides decide to just start running towards each other, epic clash, chaos" (which is militarily so fucking stupid and nobody ever did that)).

Anyway, that premise is amazing. You could do so much with it. And if you wanted to make a miniseries about it, the biggest question would surely be: Why did Arminius switch sides? That’s the key plot point. And themes of otherness, oppression, exploitation, identity, and so on, would be a good fit. The first problem with the miniseries is that it has nothing to say about any of that. Arminius doesn’t even feel like the main character (aside from his actor being a cut above the rest). We don’t get to see much of his POV. We don’t get many meaningful conversations between him and Varus (actually just one after which he has a total character transplant). Instead, we get to spend lots of time with characters that don’t add anything in particular to the central plot nor to any of the central themes. Literally, why? 6 episodes is already pretty fucking short to make Arminius’ turn believable, so you’d better spend most of them on him. This is not material for an ensemble show (nevermind that the other characters suck and are not well-acted and written to behave stupidly... that’s just ON TOP of the fundamental issue of this show lacking a POV).

Like, you can turn this into a big Hollywood action movie about the battle or you make it a character drama where the battle is also told from a character perspective (i.e. focusing on the mounting fear and desperation of the soldiers as the battle drags on for days etc but more importantly focusing on why the battle takes place and why it’s important to both the Romans and the “Germans”). As it is, in the show, we don’t get any idea why the Romans are even there in the first place and pestering the people by demanding some tributes. And we don’t get any idea why the Germanic tribes are so opposed to this or why others of them might not be. We don’t get any of the broader political implications, we just get some eagle-stealing pranks (defiance!! cool, just agitate them in a completely stupid and arbitrary way, why don’t you) and a few people executed because the “Germans” were being stupid. That’s not the scale that’s needed here. And I don’t mean that we needed to see mass executions. In fact, I would have preferred if there had been no such hackneyed and emotionally manipulative device.

Arminius is basically absent for all the early encounters of the Romans with the “Germans”. So while we suspect that the mistreatment of the “Germans” at the hands of the Romans would be a strong motivational factor for him, we don’t actually see him witness any of few hints in that direction that we get, so it doesn’t actually matter for his character arc. I have so many issues with how his arc is written. In the first episodes, we don’t get any sense that he’s not a happy Roman. When a “Barbarian” mercenary ridicules Rome, he has him whipped and we don’t get much of a sense that he’s very conflicted about it. Even just moments before he ends up destroying his effigies of Roman gods, we see him trying to get Varus to send him back to Rome. Earlier in the same episode, he prays to those Roman gods. I’m sorry but wtf? How the turntables... If you want to make it believable that he would turn on Rome, why not start with him already being frustrated with the way that things in Rome work? With the way the army is run? And why not give him a careerist streak and make him frustrated that he can’t advance much further because of his lowly birth and background? And instead of Varus being an asshole to him about it (he’s supposed to be his foster father, surely Arminius would already know how Varus thinks about his people and surely he’d already know how far he can climb up the ranks), have Varus be sympathetic but basically like “sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”

Arminius betraying Rome shouldn’t be about Varus saying something mean~, if anything a personal connection of his with Varus should just make the betrayal harder and be something that he does despite the fact that there are Romans he cares about. If you start out the show with him already having significant doubts about his place in the Roman army and identity issues, you just need to add something to it that will finally breaks the camel’s back. Have him become increasingly agitated by the way the "Germans” are treated by the Romans. Start the show with him making to leave Rome, someone asking him whether he’s excited to return to his place of birth and him joking about it but obviously being conflicted and then overwhelmed when he actually gets there because it totally destroys his sense of self which he has built for himself (and for which we would have needed to see the contrast, even if just for one scene, of how he is treated in Rome – perhaps snobbed by others, not treated equally in some sort of social setting, could be something subtle – to show us and him that as much as he wishes, he is not and will never be accepted as a Roman).

And then when he gets to the provinces, we need to see that from his perspective. What’s his reaction to arriving there? To seeing the familiar landscapes? (Or maybe he was taken as a younger child and doesn’t actually have that many memories of it but feels a sense of belonging anyway.) There are so many scenes in this show that seem to hint at these things but they are completely random and unfocused and interspersed with the stupid village people shenanigans. Varus talks about burning down villages in retribution. Well, why don’t we see any of that? (Nevermind that it’s comic book villain level of evil, but I’m working with a fix here and not a total rewrite as would be better.) Surely it can’t be too expensive to burn down a few huts in the night. And having Arminius ride along / witness it but not say anything even though we can see these things having an effect on him. As mentioned: The worst offense is the scene when he rides to the village (with other Romans in tow!) and announces “hi dad!” just to have that cliffhanger. Wtf?

Characters doling out information that the viewer doesn’t have is the absolute worst way of telling a story and maintaining tension. It should be the other way around. How about instead you have him be part of a Roman delegation that rides into the village and demands [random, whatever, the fucking eagle if you must keep that shit] and when the Reik (whom the audience already knows to be Arminius’ father) doesn’t want to give it (because he’s not actually a weak fucking clown as almost everyone in the actual show is aside from feisty Thusnelda who’s a fierce~ fucking clown rmfe), the Romans begin beating the dad or whipping him or whatever, completely humiliating him and his people, and we see Arminius on his horse watching the show with growing unrest until the realization really hits him that this is his father (cue flashback to a very young Arminius being dragged away) and the tension keeps ratcheting until he shouts in German “that’s enough” before correcting himself to give the same command in Latin (maybe he still thinks in German, would be an interesting idea) and the Romans look at him with suspicion, like wtf was that, and the "Germans” are like, why tf does this Roman officer speak German, and it’s super awkward and shit and maybe Varus is also there and he looks at Arminius like, oh shit I need to protect my boy he’s actually all up in his feels about these wildlings let’s go back to the camp and have a talk, and so the Romans end up leaving and the “Germans” are like “wait, was that... could it have been.. remember lil Ari who you gave up... but it couldn’t be...” and meanwhile the beaten dad doesn’t want to hear any of that because he actually has never dared hope he would see his son again and also he kind of doesn’t want to see him again because he would be too ashamed to meet his eyes.

And then later we see Arminius pacing up and down in his tent because this won’t let him go, even after he had a talk with Varus, and after some agonizing he steals away in the night to go confront his father (if you want to keep that German mercenary noticing shit, have him notice that). And then we see the father in his hut and everything is quiet and we are waiting for Arminius to show up because we know he’s on his way. But we don’t know whether he wants to talk to his father or just kill him in revenge for the trauma he’s caused him. You’d show the dad and if it were a good actor, you could see so much in his unrest, maybe despite not wanting to think that that guy could be his son, he kind of knows in his heart that it must be and he’s unsettled and whatnot and then we hear someone outside the door and the door opens and there stands Arminius in a cloak and there’s none of that ridiculous music that wants to scream “epic” but falls way short. Have it be quiet. Have Arminius enter and pull back the hood and they just look at each other. And the dad looks like he wants to hug him but he doesn’t move. And Arminius looks like he wants to murder him but he actually moves to sit down, all the while they keep an eye on each other because who knows, they might actually end up murdering each other. That’s the kind of confrontation you need with a reunion like this jfc. And then they talk and it’s an important scene and I’m not going to write it all out but I hope y’all know what I mean.

I feel like you’d have to rewrite this whole show to actually give the character drama the weight that it needs and deserves because what’s happening in the show is dramatic af but you wouldn’t know because it’s so unbelievably stupidly written. I CANNOT believe that when Arminius is back in the village, he’s standing around with Thusnelda and Folkwin in a field as if they’re catching up at a high school reunion. “So, how’s it been?” “My name is now Arminius lol” “You’re kidding lol” ... uhm hello ??? Is this show a meme or...???

Actually as a last thought, I would have kept Arminius’ mother alive and killed his dad. His dad is irredeemable. He gave him away. But if we assume that he never had a substitute mother, then meeting his mother again (who was against giving him away) would make for much more interesting scenes and would also have a much stronger impact on Arminius. I’ll stop now but I just wanted to note how much I hate the writing on this show and everything it chooses to be. Thanks.

#anonymous #ask #reply #barbarians spoilers #barbarians meta #tv: barbarians #txt #i feel like there is so much more to say #actually the show would need to be rewritten from scratch to be either a good character drama or a good period drama or both #forget my fix here #you can't fix stupid #the whole motivation for arminius' betrayal would need to be revamped #with an eye towards the ways in which it has been misused #in history #but at the same time the story DOES need to be told from his POV imo and it's not here and that's the biggest issue #the conflict within the Roman army would have made for the most intriguing approach #and all that childhood sweetheart bs has to go #that was the worst #so soapy and plain bad #can you imagine how amazing it would've been for roman officer arminius to meet germanic princess thusnelda for the first time?#(if she had been written and acted well)#what could have been...#imma cry #(also WHY is varus the actual foster father of arminius instead of just a higher-ranking officer who takes him under his wing #when he joins up bc he takes a liking to the kid? just... aöldjsfaökdjls)

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summerbummin · 5 years

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Class 1A&B Fusion Headcanons

Yaoyorozu and Kendou Fusion: Momokendou

• mom friend

• will drag classmates away by the ear when they're doing stupid shit

• "Monoma for heavens sake-"

• teachers love them

• gets headaches from having their hair in a ponytail all day (and bc of their troublesome children classmates)

• drinks relaxing tea at the end of the day while listening to classical music

• was this close to grabbing bakugou and washing out his mouth with soap

• feminism increases 20% in their presence

• polite but will not hesitate to kick your ass

• they would never step on you bc they're too nice but if they did you'd thank them

Monoma and Shinsou Fusion: Monoshin (Shinsou isn’t tech in class a or b yet but shhh)

• ambitious af

• will not hesitate to use you as a stepping stool

• "who needs flashy when you can be deadly instead?"

• *scoffs at class 1a* idiots

• their smile is hella unnerving

• choked by Aziawa's scarf on the daily

• cheats at board games

• everyone knows they cheat but no one can prove it

• they're the definition of that one post abt how "being gay is being totally narcisstic one second and then depressed and self-loathing in the next"

• doesn't know how to talk to people, they bluff their way through all social interactions and can come across as asshole-ish

• "dude did you even sleep" "hahaha sleep is for the weak"

• tests stress them out so they stay up all night studying and in the morning they be a zombie

• will glare at you with deadened eyes as they obnoxiously slurp their 7th cup of coffee that hour

•they're a brat

Tetsutetsu and Kirishima Fusion: Tetsukiri

• BRO

• gym rat

• uses way too much axe body spray

• [sees a shark] gasp brother?

• wears tacky tank tops that say things like "suns out guns out" and "I flexed and the sleeves fell off"

• slurps protein shakes out do gogurts for the aesthetic

• isn't aware of the notion of an indoor voice

• when they get excited they jump up in the air and scream

• have nearly deafened their classmates who have stronger hearing (jirou, shoji, etc)

• customary greeting is a hug but it's not always appreciated

• they're always sweaty bc they're working out constantly

• "bro do you even lift?"

• Fitbit count is higher than All Might's

Tokoyami and Kuroiro Fusion: Lord of the Eternal Night (they insisted to be called that, ppl call them "Night" for short):

• "what a mad banquet of darkness"

• wears black in July and is still surprised when they pass out from heat stroke

• single tear rolls down their face as they listen to black parade

• plays animal crossing

• wanna recruit Midoriya for their shadow cult after seeing his new black whip power

• "come to the dark side we have cookies"

• edgelord

• plays pranks on people but no one even suspects its them and they snicker quietly as someone else gets blamed

• people watcher

• speaks like some old timey oracle come to deliver a world altering prophecy

• "whatcha doing this weekend?" "bathing in the abyss" "cool"

• takes naps in trees

• "I am the night, shadows are the only thing I crave " "I don't care, eat your vegetables" "yes ma'am" (is talking to Yaomomo and Kendou fusion lol)

•sits in the dark and hisses when someone turns on a light switch

• "fake friends would cry at my funeral, true friends would know that I want to be dead and rejoice"

• A+ goth solidarity

• the fact that they still have school on Halloween is an unforgivable injustice

•will munch on birdseed with a deadpan expression and stare down the person that dares to try and speak to a primidoral deity such as themselves

I got a little carried away with the hcs for my edgy bois Tokoyami and Kuroiro ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#momokendou #monoshin #tetsukiri #bnha fusion au #class 1b #bnha #shinsou hitoshi #monoma neito #yaoyorozu momo #kendou itsuka #tetsutetsu tetsutetsu #kirishima eijiro #tokoyami fumikage #kuroiro shihai #fusion au #bnha headcanons #headcanons #steven universe

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fipindustries · 5 years

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my experience with my gender and my sexuality

because i think it is about fucking time i talk about this somewhere. this is a cheerful post, intimate sure, way too oversharing, certainly, but i like to think of it as joyous sharing because i feel like i can finally talk about this stuff freely and gosh ive been keeping so many things on the inside and now i just want to shout them to the world, consequences be damned

for years i have fantasized about becoming a woman. i will say it here now: i want to be a woman, i want to try it, i want to know what is like to look like one, to dress like one, to be called one, to be treated as one. if after a while i get bored of it, or tired or figure out its not my true self, or it just doesnt fit me for whatever reason then i reserve the right to back off and try something else. but for now this is my state of being and im going to share the story of how i got here.

my earliest memories of dealing with this confusion are about me reading a magazine talking about trans issues and me watching the movie “ma vie en rose” and “boys dont cry”. i was too young perhaps to be exposed to these ideas in such a candid and direct way. perhaps not mature enough to fully process or understand what i had seen, to the point that for most of my childhood i had this irrational fear that i would become a woman when i hit puberty. that my dick would just shrink into a vagina, that i would start growing tits, that i would get pregnant, etc.

i was a very unmasculine child, i didnt like sports, in fact i didnt like most typically boyish stuff. i thought muscles where gross, i thought violence and fighting was scary. i thought most boys played too rough for my taste. i was meek, shy, and a huge nerd. but i also had a strange rejection for most girly stuff. it was too soft and frilly and silly and pink and yucky. on top of all that, my understanding of trans people was mostly shaped then by drag queens and outrageous transvestites whose aesthetic, to this day, i find garish, over the top and unpleasant to look at. sorry, is just not something i identify with.

during this time i started to engage in all sorts of strange games as a child. i would start trying on my sister’s panties or my mom’s panties in the shower. i would created these elaborate scenarios where i would have all the stuffed toys in my room “kidnap” me, force me to give birth to them and then breast feed them.

cartoon shows that dealt with themes of gender bending held a powerful fascination to me, i particularly remember the fairly odd parents episode “the boy who would be queen”. i had this strange sense of love-hate relationship with it and anything on that topic where i just couldnt help to be obssessed with it but at the same time feel like it was illicit or transgressive for me to watch it.

then i hit puberty and a light switch went off. where instead of being scared or unnerved by those ideas i just kept obssessing more and more over them. i started googling everything i could about gender bending, about gynecomastia, about how to grow breasts with certain herbs or supplements. it was specifically on the breasts that i was fixated, i kept promissing myself that i would get them no matter what.

at the same time on the outside i was more than comfortable presenting myself as a boy, a geeky boy sure, but a boy all the same. i liked wearing high waisted pants, tucked in shirt and tie. i liked having short hair. i fantasized about growing a mustache. what’s more i definetly identified as a boy. i went to an all boy’s high school where we were taught stereotipicaly male things like working with heavy machinery, welding, general workshop engeneering stuff and i enjoyed all of it. i was still a huge outcast and not the manliest person but back then i figured it was because i was just a huge nerd.

i had no rejection of my body or the changes it was going through, i grew hair, limbs, genitals, etc and didnt thought much of it that i can recall, beyond a vague sense of not wanting to look too adult because it made me look too much like my dad, with whom i never had the best of relationships. beyond that socially i was a boy and had no issues fitting there.

i masturbated a lot, and a lot of those fantasies involved gender bending. usually boys growing breasts, boys being subjected to forced feminization, etc. there were other fantasies but those dont have a lot of bearing on the subject at hand. one of the things that excited me the most back then was to call myself a woman. to insist over and over that i was a girl. like the feeling that i was brainwashing myself into femminity was a huge turn on (this is why for the longest time i was convinced i was an autogynephile, and honestly, jury’s still out on that account). then, as soon as i finished i would quickly tell myself “im not a woman” as a strange way of “no homo” myself from my fantasies. i was still doing ocassional crossdressing whenever i was alone at home with my mom’s clothes, again, usually for the purposes of masturbation

i have been attracted to girls for the large majority of my life, it wouldnt be until college that i would experiment with boys too and found that i could enjoy that as well, but my main interest has always been consistently girls. yet a lot of the time my attraction towards girls would come from a place of envy. of apreciating how pretty they looked and wishing i could look that pretty myself. once i started college most of these fantasies came with me, i kept researching about gender bending and about ways i could try to gender bend myself. some times it was because of fetishistic reasons but a lot of the time was because i just found the subject inherently fascinating. it was like this that i came across a lot of information about trans people, back in like 2011 and when i first started to really understand them as a community and grapple with concepts such a gender dysphoria and such. back then i reached the conclussion that while i understood and sympathized with trans women, i was just a crossdresser because i didnt experience gender dysphoria and because i had never experienced anything even close to the feeling of “being a woman on the inside”.

what was more, it was around this time that identity politics really started to get traction, things like “die cis scum”, “yes all men”, “white men tears” etc started to be thrown around and, as someone who had been identifying as male for his entire life, i felt personally attacked by most of it. an immature reaction on hindsight, but a reaction that cemented in my mind the idea that i was a man and there were no buts or ifs about it.

i kept crossdressing, i kept fantasizing, i kept fetishizing. i even experiemented with auto hypnosis because i was realizing more and more that i was never going to be able to truly make my fantasy about becoming a woman real so was was willing to try anything that would get me even close to it. i cross dressed because i liked the way i looked, i liked the way the clothes felt against my skin, i liked the feeling of trying on a different role, one that was forbidden to me. as time went on i stated doing it less and less because of the sexual gratification and more for its own sake.

then the crisis came.

i wrote about this before, i saw a bunch of people i knew coming out of the closet at an advanced age, people like jacob chapman, the wachowsky sisters, even reading about the story of how allison bechdel. the idea of someone figuring out their identity way into their adulthood shattered my world view and it introduced me the possibility that i might be in the same situation, which led me to panic. all the crossdressing, the fascination with gender bending and with trans issues were strongly suggestive if nothing else, but back then i was just not ready at all to confront those possibilities so i supressed like a mad man.

three years later, here i am. during those three years i slowly and gradually came to grips the possibility, slowly losing my fear of what i might lose if i came out of the closet, slowly examining my self and comparing my story with the story of others in the community. finding differences but also finding a lot of similarities. for the longest time my trans ex girlfriend would insist that i was very much not trans because a lot of my experiences were very different from hers, such as the fact that i never had issues inhabiting the rol of a boy whereas her dysphoria had been strong enough to the point of suicidal tendencies for most of her life.

one of my biggest concerns had always been the fact that i had heard from many trans people that their dysphoria hadnt really kicked in until after they started transitioning. as in, once they started trying to look like women then they realized how far away they were from truly being one, making what until then had been a vague feeling of discomfort into a true rejection of their own body. but then on the other hand there was also the real possibility that i would end up having a mental breakdown once i hit my fifties after years of repression and by that point i would look like just an old man in a wig

i think what finally made me tip over the edge were the contra points videos and the reddit community egg_irl. i just identified too much with what i saw there, and breaking up with my gf had left me free to explore those feelings without fear of ruining my relationship. so where does that leave me?

still confused, but no longer scared of the answers. willing to give this and honest go and see where it takes me. im still not ready to call myself a trans girl with all the letters. i understand that gender is complicated but i would really appreciate a unified theory of gender to help me make heads or tails of what i am and what i am feeling beyond vague notions about “the spectrum” and “social roles”. i guess i could be considered gender fluid as of right now but honestly that label doesnt mean that much to me on a practical sense considering i am still presenting my self as a boy in my every day life with one or two exceptions

i have a lot of work ahead of me and for once i am excited about doing it right.

#most of this is just me drafting what im going to say to my therapist #rambly

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happymetalgirl · 5 years

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Neckbeard Deathcamp - So Much for the Tolerant Left

After making waves last year with their wonderfully disrespectful parody of NSBM on White Nationalism Is for Basement Dwelling Losers, Neckbeard Deathcamp have quickly returned with another offering of neo-Nazi mockery. Since making waves online with the relative explosion of their debut album, Neckbeard Deathcamp have become much more well-known for their loud online presence than anything else relating to their music, which is fine.

When I talked about their breakout album last year, I mentioned how its valid artistic and comedic value stemmed from its very shittiness, an intentional characteristic of its mockery of the pathetic lo-fi production and terrible writing within the NSBM scene. Naturally, it's not the kind of album you return to after enjoying the context-based (and indeed valid) comedy of it all. So it's no wonder really that they're back already, and while there have definitely been improvements on the musical front to show that this band can actually make a cohesive modern black metal album, the band kind of ends up repeating their original joke in a much less fitting package. I don't know if the band have printed lyrics at all for this album, but being that it's certainly not musically enjoyable enough for me to buy a physical copy in the hopes of finding more hilarious narrations and being that they haven't included lyrics on their Bandcamp page, the main source of their debut album's hilarity is lost on this one, which is left only with titles in the same vein as those on the debut.

The album's cover donning the debut's recognized Nazi eagle emblem made out of dicks above Richard Spencer getting a wedgie implies the same confident jeering at the alt-right that the debut had, but this album is not any more confrontational in context (and probably less so in content) than the band's debut. And while snickering song titles and cheeky album art seem to suggest the band are content to continue making fun of the stupidity of white nationalism, the comedic fun really stops right there both in content and context.

The improved listenability of this album has me conflicted. On one hand, I actually wouldn't mind replaying this thing in the future; it actually has some of the harsh, satisfying qualities in the forms that make black metal appealing. Songs like "Shitpostnacht" and "Operation Neet" actually carry some decent, down-tuned, lo-fi blackened sludge riffage, while the closing track and the 10-minute "Horseshoe Theory" seem to take cues from Primitive Man's approach to harsh industrial noise, and the result is actually not too bad, nothing special, but certainly not as shitty as the purposely muffled and grainy debut. On the other hand, the NSBM spoofing aspect of the album is reduced to the occasional samples of neo-Nazi propaganda that pop up, effectively removing the purpose of the musical aspect of this whole project.

But Neckbeard Deathcamp wasn't really even about the listening to the intentionally horrendous music in the first place. It's been more about the surrounding discussion and the thrill of triggering sensitive neo-Nazis online and participating in the most vivacious expression of contempt for that group.Being that this is a music blog and I'm by no means any kind of expert on the best way to combat fascist ideology within metal or in the grander scheme of things, I didn't want to talk about the cesspool of political discourse on Twitter, but being that this band's identity and aesthetic is tied so closely to it (even if their music is not), I feel I have to at least briefly address that.

Conservatives and progressive activists alike have long lambasted, rolled their eyes at, and become frustrated over the recent trends of how the politically uninformed and uninvested co-opt the language of progressive activism into hollow, feel-good platitudes of pop feminism for the sake of clout through that dreaded act of v i r t u e s i g n a l l i n g. And the actual valid importance of virtue signalling in certain contexts is its own messy discussion, which I'm not going to suck up more of this music review with. But as aggravating as clout-chasing fake-wokeness is, the similar practice on the more radical side of the political spectrum, in its own way, is similarly problematic. On the more aggressively confrontational sliver of the broad anti-fascist position, the boisterous expression intolerance for fascism and its proponents under the guise of justified lack of civility is as much of a disingenuously motivated performance as what happens in the clout-chasing middle of the political spectrum. At least that's what it seems to be from what I have consistently seen on the anti-fascist metal Twitter sphere that Neckbeard Deathcamp participates in and has now based their identity upon. And Neckbeard Deathcamp are honestly not even the most egregious offenders in that bubble, but they do participate in and perpetuate it, and it is something that needs to be talked about but seems to be rather suppressed. And just to be clear so that no one from that circle gets as quickly upset as the sensitive Nazis on the other side, it's not that fascism isn't a reprehensible ideology or that neo-Nazis deserve to feel as comfortable sharing their ideas as we do; it's because the indulgence in the catharsis of vehemently vilifying the, indeed, justifiably condemnable evil of fascism seems to be done so lazily and aimed so irresponsibly that it comes across as self-serving and counterproductive. Rather than proclaiming baseless platitudes about girl power for woke pop feminist clout or publicly shaming borderline offences for the sake of self-righteous elation, the more radical version of these practices finds publicly committed antifascists chasing the same kinds of validation through ostentatious expressions of basic, widely appealing condemnation of fascism (like the feigned valor of the "Nazis are not welcome here" proclamation, as if it's really all that bold or controversial of a stance or as if Nazis these days are even overt enough to be deterred by that kind of blanket-statement-ass lip service). But then there's also the poor aim and irresponsible invocation of infighting when criticism of mishandling of aggression or advocacy for violence arises from other progressives, during which expressive and careless antifascists tend to deflect from justified questioning to the suggestion that criticism of their methods is compliance with, if not indicative of direct support of, fascism. It usually comes with the suggestion that the forsaking of civil discussion is justified because of how dangerous fascist ideology is and how critical it is to stamp it out. ("What kind of person is against punching Nazis?") It's the stereotypical cop-out of calling everyone against you a Nazi that the political right wing has run wild with. And, again, it's not that Nazis should feel their worldview is valid and accepted in society. The problem with mislableing and then lashing out when the mislabeled defend themselves is that it looks ridiculously unreasoned from the outside (which it often is) and pushes away those quieter, less politically invested people on the fence away when they see it or experience it. I get that fascists these days are cryptic with their fringe status (which I certainly like to look at optimistically as one positive sign of the times among the many other dismal ones). But of course fascists will resort to these methods when the fully evolved from of their worldview is so universally detested. And if fascists will adapt their game plan to resist the one-dimensional attack of antifa shrieking, which they will if they haven't completely already, anti-fascist activism and those who represent it like Neckbeard Deathcamp like need to adapt to combatting the more covert spread of fascism as well. Good god, I thought this was an album review, about an album, of music./10

#Neckbeard Deathcamp #So Much for the Tolerant Left #black metal #shitty bedroom reich black metal #metal #heavy metal #new music #new album #album review

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sivemqikela · 6 years

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Sangomas and Struggle Heroes: Art after the Fees Must Fall moment - Sive Mqikela

“Day to day reality is therefore itself any illusion created by the mass of our needs, our ideas, our wants. Transform the needs, the ideas, the wants, and at once, as though with a magic wand, you transform the available reality. To write as though only one kind of reality subsists in the world is to act out a mentally retarded mime, for a mentally deficient audience. If I am an illusion, then that is a delusion that is very real indeed.” – Dambudzo Marechera, Black Sunlight

In July 2018, a group of art students under the name ‘Wits Stash’ set out to the Grahamstown (now Makhanda) National Arts Festival (the festival) to present the best of art that the University of the Witwatersrand School of Arts (WSOA) has to offer. The entourage comprised of four plays - Amabali Amandulo, Indodakazi Yakho, Vuselela and The Last Respect, and one musical act, the Afro-jazz ensemble - iPhupho L’ka Biko. This was the first time that WSOA sent students to the festival to showcase their works under its banner. I was asked by the collective to write a review of the works presented, for the purposes of the group being able to read itself and its artistic effectiveness, so as to make the trips to the festival a tradition that will continue for years to come. This review is mainly my reading of the plays, not only because they constituted the majority of works presented by the collective, but also because the music has been engaged lengthily elsewhere; although my observations here are not in exclusion of the music. The plays were in different styles and theatre genres, but in the main addressed themes of protest, historicism, existentialism and feminism (Indodakazi yakho). Although this is a review of the aforementioned plays, it is also a de facto reading of the whole contemporary South African theatre scene as witnessed in the festival.

In all the freshness that a particular work of art may possess, artistic works are the always-already-present fragments of our realities, organised and given coherence as narrative anew. In this terrain, the stage does not become a mere mimicry of life, but life and history are laid bare in creative and imaginative form. What should a representation of a life in chaos, confusion, betrayal and spiritual bankruptcy, such as is life in South Africa look like? The formulation of the ‘Wits Stash’ is perhaps a clue to this rhetorical question. After the festival it became apparent to me that contemporary theatre is very much interested in the classic black theatrical themes of protest, spirituality and tragicomedy. This is no coincidence, owing to our very own little affair with history – the Fees Must Fall (FMF) moment.

This trip to the festival was an opportunity to witness the sediments of a post-FMF arts and culture scene. One was left wondering and imagining what the post-1976 artistic scene looked like; it probably looked something like this ‘Wits Stash’ moment in Makhanda.

Pause….

The contemporary arts and cultural scene owes itself to the enthusiasm and indecision, doubt and confusion, chaos and order, of post-1994 South Africa. From everyone, there is a burning need to respond, to kick and scream, to take to the streets, to battle with history fair and square; all the necessary tools are available (arguably), we just do not know how to use them. After chaos there is confusion; everybody has something to say but there is just no way of corroborating its validities. With so much information available to us, how do we use it in the most creative and sustainable manner? Where do we go from here?

This I imagine to be the dilemma in the aftermath of 1976, save for the fact that post-1976 was probably approached with more ideological clarity, perhaps because there was a more visible obstacle to black liberation – apartheid.

We are in no position to tell right now – only time will.

If not to elope to Europe or swell the ranks of the liberation front; to join the picket line or wish for a miracle; where did the 1976 generation go in the aftermath of crisis? If they did art, what kind of art did they do?

While there are such great works in the South African black theatre repository to work from, contemporary theatre seems unable to respond to the problems of our time in the same compelling and poetic manner that great works of ‘protest theatre’ like Woza Albert (1981) and Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972) did for their ‘time’. While we can detect the influence of these classics and others on the plays presented by the ‘Wits Stash’, their imaginative and artistic impact is however overlooked and misunderstood. For example in Vuselela the powerful trope of the invisible and omnipresent character as seen in both Sizwe Banzi is Dead and Woza Albert, is attempted to allude to the omnipresence of black suffering in the face of domination; but as the play unfolds this character is revealed haphazardly on recurring dance scenes; and as a result the work of this metaphor is rendered banal, all for the sake of being multidisciplinary.

The problem with contemporary theatre is its obsession with ‘the spectacle’, in the same sense that Njabulo Ndebele observed with black South African literature during apartheid. In what felt like the newspaper headlines from The Dailysun and Sowetan, we see on signposts and street lamps around Johannesburg roads, the plays go for the overly dramatic and ‘spectacular’ element of social life in South Africa: police and state brutality; politicians and lies ; violence of all kinds, ancestors haunting the living etc.

These plays are not only concerned with a generalised display of ‘the spectacular’ but they are also very intentional with asserting political positions – ‘the spectacle of politicking’. In The Last Respect, as the protagonist ‘Goodman Moswaswi’, an apparently schizophrenic ‘direct victim of apartheid violence’, goes on his episodes of remembering the gruesome suffering endured at the hands of apartheid, all experience and memory communicated by him are channelled through a stream of incoherence and absurdity, but only one thing is coherent, his instinct to politick. We see ‘Goodman’ moving from ‘economic freedom’ and ‘expropriation’ talk to statements about ‘sell-outs’ and ‘askari’.

One could argue that politicking is nothing reprehensible in the creative process; but what happens when art is sacrificed for pure political undertones. What do we make of the arbitrary calling out of struggle heroes’ names – “viva Nyerere, viva Lumumba, viva Biko…” whenever we see fit, even when the context demands otherwise? Do we use the authority and stature of these figures so that no one disagrees with us? Without being prescriptive, I am of the view that when one has interacted with certain texts and ideas, we can always discern his/her influences without the help of ‘name-dropping’. We saw and heard enough moving speeches and amandla awethu during the FMF, and the ‘stage’ requires a more artistically persuasive and inspiring political commentary, if one seeks to do protest theatre.

Is it not possible to have creative imagination take the centre ‘stage’, even when representing real situations about social and political life in South Africa?

How do we create art that not only confirms what we know, but also offers challenges and critical engagement with what is being presented?

This being said, I am cognisant of the fact that the political narrative has shifted into our social culture as a nation. Politics has not only permeated our personal and public lives, but also our cultural production and imaginative labours. It is probably inescapable for the contemporary cultural worker; hence it is not surprising to find the political narrative central in many works of theatre and other literatures. While we cannot blame writers and cultural workers for centring the political thematic or using political vocabulary in their work, we can however be more careful with the style and aesthetics of the political narrative we choose to employ. We need to be more critical and reflexive about the forms that we choose to use in order to convey the political.

In ‘the spectacle’ of postcolonial discourses sits the grandfather of all rhetoric – the notion of the African past. Yes – that mystical world of speculation; of apparent harmony and inherent rhythm; a world of sangoma’s and ancestors. The problem with this discourse, even well-meaning ones, is that it fails to acknowledge that all discourse on the (post)colony is a product of domination, and the ideas we have of an African past and Africanity are actually inventions of colonial discourse, which serve as a ‘subtle operation of temporal distancing’. Amabali Amandulo (stories from the past), in what appears to be an innocent story devised in ‘township/physical theatre’ style, is engaged with notions of the African past. In terms of the synopsis the play “speaks back to the politics of family, power dynamics and gender inequalities”, based on family life of the past. The play employs common tropes of the myth of ‘Africanity’: ancestors with gnarled bodies gyrating and speaking to the living in the most literal and arbitrary manner; freaks of nature with hoarse voices; friends capriciously turn into enemies; and uncontrollable sexual desires – smells like colonial imagery to me. Through cursory scene changes, the play denies us a sense of spatiotemporal coherence and causality (Africa with no time); and instead of stories from the past the play feels more like an assemblage of stereotypes about rural life in South Africa. The play gets one thing right though: this African past is a very strange past if we are to take the myth serious.

Overall, all the plays were well directed and outstandingly performed. Elegant amalgamations of different artistic forms were employed in all the plays in the service of accompanying the acting. No one can deny the artistic wholesomeness of each play. The actors are undoubtedly some of the best actors in the country. My concern is just with the conceptual development involved in the making of the stories. After all, whatever the artistic validity a certain work of art may possess, in trying to make sense of it there are, in Hayden Whites words “always legitimate grounds for differences of opinion as to what they are and the kinds of knowledge we can have of them”. These are but my observations. If we are to return to the epigraph from Dambudzo Marechera and listen to his caution, we ought not to create art as though only one kind of reality exists. In conclusion, I am of the view that collectively as art students and cultural workers we should not only revisit the classical texts that continue to shape our work and imagination, but we should also familiarise ourselves with theoretical work from other disciplines such as literature and social sciences in order to widen our worlds and enrich our imaginative force.

Yours Truly

BLK Thought

(work in progress)

#Art after the FMF

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