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redshoes-blues · 2 years

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The Will Byers Full-Circle Theory

Stranger Things 4, vol. 1 spoilers ahead + me putting my literature minor to use

Let’s talk about Will Byers as a character, Vecna’s curse, and the Mind Flayer. This theory will have a part 2 relating to my Byler-centric ideas about how this could all play out in vol. 2 (and how I think it will trickle into season 5), but for now I’ll focus on the theory itself.

Part 2 of this theory: Will Byers’ Vecna Song

Mirroring in Stranger Things

Stranger Things references the effects of mirroring throughout the series in multiple avenues, both within the text and visuals, along with the subtext. Most obviously may be the Upside Down, which we know as a twisted / dark mirror of Hawkins’ reality. Within season 4 (and previous seasons) a lot of the shots themselves further the idea of mirroring: El in the rainbow room, the biking sequence, the end of ep. 7 with the rope between realities, etc. This shows up in characters as well, like Henry Creel (001) who is mirrored and realized within Vecna himself. Mirroring is a common storytelling device which is used to draw comparisons between characters, plot lines, places, and other elements in a story. We clearly see this within much of Stranger Things.

I’ve seen some people point out Henry Creel as a mirror or foil for Will due to some similarities in their character traits. They’re both sensitive and drawn to interests seen as odd or even dark by the larger world (black widow spiders which Henry emphasizes with despite their links to death; D&D for Will, which is seen as silly by some, and even potentially Satanic by the town during season 4). They also both have a talent for drawing, and are shown drawing these “unusual interests.” These similarities could be used as a way of building empathy towards Henry (making his motives more understandable) by drawing comparison to an established outcast character who we know to be good. It’s their actions and the ways they react to being outcasts that set them apart. But the similarities could also be building towards a full-circle moment of Will confronting Vecna in one way or another. More on that later.

Will and the Upside Down

Will has a connection to the Upside Down like nobody else in the series, which further sets him apart. Although others are shown as having connections to the Upside Down, the entire story began because Will went missing: lost in a mirror dimension. A parallel world. In season 1, Will is frightened and sings to himself in Castle Byers (a location which symbolizes his childhood innocence). With the help of his friends, Will is returned to reality and the real world Hawkins. But as we know, he is scarred from his experience there, dealing with “True Sight” and a deepening connection to the Mind Flayer in season 2. In season 2, he’s the only character who has this kind of connection to the Upside Down. Even El, who we now know to be involved in the creation of the original gate, doesn’t have such an intimate tie to it. Although Will is no longer possessed in season 3, his connection to the Upside Down continues as he is able to sense the presence of the Mind Flayer. Then the gate is destroyed, the Meat Flayer is destroyed, the Byers move away, and all seems well.

The Mind Flayer

Now, I want to create a little side-note about Vecna vs. the Mind Flayer, because I know there is a lot of discourse about which is the true big bad of the series. Personally, I see the Mind Flayer as the real villain pulling the strings. I think season 4 pushes this idea because we know the Upside Down existed before Vecna/Henry Creel/001 were banished there. The Mind Flayer seems to be a much larger, more cosmic deity who is quite Lovecraftian and clearly not human. There are lots of other reasons for this that I could elaborate on in another post. But for now the main takeaway is that I agree with Dustin about Vecna being the top general of the Mind Flayer, who acts in accordance to the true villain.

If the Mind Flayer is the real villain, then Will’s connection to it is even more crucial and powerful. This is potentially the most powerful being in the entire series, and Will has a tie to it like no other character.

Vecna’s Curse

Like many others, I think Will will (ha) fall under Vecna’s curse in vol. 2. In fact, I think it’s inevitable for this to happen. It wasn’t until the gate closed that Will lost his ability to feel the presence of the Mind Flayer (and its soldiers), and then he moved away. Now, Will is likely going back to Hawkins where we know there is not just one opening to the Upside Down, but at least three presently. In other words, the Mind Flayer is still in there, and when Will returns I believe that Vecna (operating within the Mind Flayer’s hive mind) will use the “spell” on him. Vecna preys on teenagers who have trauma in their pasts, which Will certainly does. Out of the Party as a whole, I think he’s the person most likely to be targeted next.

Vol. 1 reveals that music has the power to block out Vecna’s curse. Will has an obvious connection to music in general, throughout the entire series, and especially to The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” Will himself even sings the song multiple times when he’s in the Upside Down and it seems to ward off the monsters, if even momentarily. If Will does fall under the curse as I suspect, then I think it would be the most perfect full-circle moment for the series to bring back the song. Whether Will himself sings it, the Party plays the song, or Mike sings it to Will (part of my Byler-centric speculation), if he’s impacted by Vecna’s curse, it seems only natural that this would be the song he’s most connected to. In a lot of ways this would mirror the beginning of the entire series, with Will trapped in the Upside Down, listening to and singing The Clash to get himself through the traumatic experience.

But what does it mean that Will has a stronger connection to the Mind Flayer than everyone else? Would this change the way Vecna’s curse impacts him? I think it potentially could. I don’t personally believe they will kill off Will in vol. 2 (it doesn’t really make sense for his character arc), but I do think the curse could play out differently in him than the others. There are lots of things that could happen (I could speculate possibilities all day). Some see a dark Will arc in the making, with Will as the final villain, but I personally don’t see this as likely. One option I could see happening is that Will is stuck in the Upside Down at the end of season 4, leading into season 5 with him in a similar predicament to the start of the series. Perfectly mirroring the events of season 1.

My Final Thoughts

I love the idea that season 5 is a bigger and darker version of season 1 revolving around Will and taking down the Mind Flayer for good. I think it would be a phenomenal end to the series, and the story would have a cyclical effect that would resemble the way the characters, relationships, dialogue, and locations themselves are oftentimes mirrors for each other.

Even if season 4 doesn’t end with Will stuck in the Upside Down, I think Will in season 4 being caught within Vecna’s curse and having to fight to get himself out would bring a lot of closure to his trauma. It would also be a general amazing callback to the first season, especially if we see Will alone in the Upside Down with “Should I Stay or Should I Go” playing out. So overall, I think vol. 2 will conclude with a direct mirroring of Will’s experiences in the previous seasons, building on his connection to the Mind Flayer and creating a satisfying cyclical storyline.

#st 4 spoilers #stranger things #stranger things season 4 #st 4 #stranger things season 4 spoilers #will byers #vecna #vecna's curse #the upside down #will byers mirror #byler #byler is endgame #stranger things music #stranger things music theory #stranger things theory #will byers analysis #the mind flayer is behind everything #redshoes-blues

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attemptsonherlifepdf · 3 years

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transgression, the other, and the evolving shape of the gothic: a comparison of the bloody chamber and dracula

transgressive behaviours are at the forefront of gothic literature, a device used to impart messages surrounding temporally relevant cultural fascinations and anxieties. this theme runs throughout the reactionary genre’s timeline, including through bram stoker’s contribution to establishing the progression of gothic tropes in the victorian era, and angela carter’s 1970s prose. stoker’s fin de siecle novel explores the threats that transgressive behaviours pose to social norms and british values through binary oppositions, drawing upon victorian fears of reverse colonisation, sexual liberation and disease. conversely, carter’s modern subversion of the gothic explores these threats via stories of transformation and metamorphosis; both authors utilise the supernatural to personify these menaces to the norm, as is a vital characteristic of the genre. by having non-human characters commit explicit acts rather than humans, gothic authors can characterise the acts as monstrous and convey messages surrounding what these threatening acts mean for the characterisation of humanity. as put by kelley hurley, ‘through depicting the abhuman, the gothic reaffirms and reconstructs human identity.’

stoker’s traditional prose utilises the gothic concept of binary opposition in order to depict and villainise the threats posed upon his idealised christain characters by dracula. dracula himself, as an abhuman entity, is representative of sexual fluidity and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, ideas which are consistent with vampirism but are at odds with victorian english values. lucy’s brutal punishment, however, is contrasted with the anticlimactic demise of dracula himself, where his ‘whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.’ stoker could be using this opposition to suggest that those who give in to threats against typical societal conventions and fail to uphold british values are more deserving of punishment than those who actually pose the threat. the contrast provides an implication of moral inferiority: while villains are transgressive by nature, their victims who fail to resist their ideologies betray the moral code they originally conducted themselves upon. this initial betrayal is what allows the threatening character to infiltrate the population and continue to corrupt the ‘good’ characters. buzzwell supports this, suggesting that ‘lucy’s moral weakness allows dracula to repeatedly prey upon her.’ stoker arguably serves as an other himself, writing as an irish protestant in london. the opposition he constructs here between lucy and dracula’s respective manifestations of vampirism not only examines cultural variations but exemplifies and exaggerates the differences in the reactions of other characters towards them. given the author’s own ‘otheredness’, we could consider the novel a criticism of victorian xenophobia, where o’kelly argues that stoker ‘[pokes] fun at some of the victorian era’s most cherished beliefs.’ however, this view of the novel’s depiction of threats to the norm is highly disputed, with gibson highlighting stoker’s own russophobia as ‘a hatred that determines dracula’s negative portrayal as a condemnation of the orthodox eastern and slavic peoples historically allied to russia.’

contrastingly, carter’s presentation of characters succumbing to villains who jeopardise established values centres around ideas of solidarity, which she demonstrates through the ‘victims’ experience of metamorphosis. her techniques differ from stoker’s in that his use of binary oppositions is undoubtedly traditional of both the gothic and of the manichean mentality of victorian england. the usage of metamorphosis, on the other hand, allows carter to force audiences to grapple with liminality and she suggests to them that ‘othered’ groups or individuals are not entirely evil. this is a view which reflects carter’s modern, second-wave feminist perspective. jaques derrida’s ‘theory of the other’ posits that ‘otherness often provokes a paradoxical response in the viewer: fascination and repulsion.’ often the fascination is morbid, working in conjunction with repulsion: audiences are curious to understand what disgusts them. the tiger’s bride and the courtship of mr lyon, two stories within the bloody chamber collection, are subverted retellings of the traditional ‘beauty and the beast’ fairytale. while maintaining the general events of the original ending, where beauty stays with the beast of her own volition, carter offers up two dynamics between the human and abhuman that serve to recharacterise ‘othered’ creatures as less threatening and more sympathetic and innocent.

the courtship of mr lyon characterises mr lyon as a ‘leonine apparition’ and an ‘angry lion’ throughout, emphasising his predatory nature and resulting in negative connotations surrounding his ‘otherness.’ his initial threatening aura is quickly negated soon after beauty’s introduction to him, as they warm up to one another, and the story concludes with mr lyon’s transformation into a human man: ‘her tears fell on his face like snow and, under their soft transformation, the bones showed through the pelt, the flesh through the wide, tawny brow. and then it was no longer a lion in her arms but a man…’ carter’s use of metamorphosis here humanises a character that would otherwise be considered a threat to traditional norms, suggesting to readers that he may have been ‘just like us all along.’ his change in physical nature is triggered by beauty’s display of affection for him; implicit in this is the notion that we can undo our villainisation of marginalised people, and emphasises the significance of understanding between privileged and unprivileged groups. carter draws the line between what is a threat and what is simply unconventional, stripping marginalised identities of their ‘dangerous’ qualities that are attributed to them by those who abide by social norms. similarly, the tiger’s bride uses metamorphosis to suggest that those who challenge established identities are not inherently menacing, and that typical and atypical creatures can coexist. rather than have a character transform from beast to man as in the previous story, carter’s ending depicts a woman-to-beast transformation. this serves to suggest that people’s desire to understand what disgusts them can manifest as identifying with the ‘other’ and unlearning their own prejudices against them. beauty’s transformation is detailed in the closing sentences of the story: ‘and each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs. my earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; i shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.’ beauty’s metamorphosis can be read as a sign of solidarity towards the beast, or an understanding of his nature. roberts posits that ‘to be beast-like is virtuous. to be manly is vicious.’ carter takes this concept and uses it to criticise conventional reactions to unconventional behaviours. she deconstructs the binary that stoker relies upon, and uses a far more modern gothic convention to negate his black-and-white depiction that presents anything challenging the norm as a threat that can infiltrate civilised society, and instead presents these ‘threats’ as liberating.

perhaps an incredibly modern reading of carter’s metamorphosed characters is as an allegory for transgenderism. discussions around gender identity during the 1970s in britain, even in second-wave feminist circles, were more concerned with rejecting and redefining traditional gender roles than they were with the personal identity of individuals, so we can assume this was not carter’s intention when writing these stories. however, ideas of physical transformation, and how proximity to the ‘other’ can ‘radicalise’ one’s own identity are very fitting with treatment of transgender people both historically and presently. genres that stem from the late gothic, namely sci-fi, have been known for using metamorphosis as an allegory for marginalised identities, using physical transformation as an allegory for ideological or emotional transformation. a prime example of this is lana and lilly wachowski’s series the matrix. written as a trans allegory, the movie series criticises the social pressure for conformity the way carter does and attempts to explicitly recharacterise trans people as an innocent non-conforming identity rather than a threat. carter’s exploration and reproval of established values similarly tends to centre around ideas of gender, making this reading not entirely unreasonable. carter and stoker’s gothic texts are equally reflective of cultural anxieties in their respective temporal contexts, but where stoker reinforces racist ideologies that are at the heart of british imperialism and victorian politics, carter suggests that societal fears surrounding gender identity and liberation are unfounded.

both carter and stoker identify the victimisation of women as an established norm that is essential to the functioning of a patriarchal, capitalist society, but once again carter criticises this and stoker instead reinforces it. the notion of female vampirism is a vehicle for this discussion in both gothic texts, particularly in terms of how these supernatural women contain sexual traits that simultaneously fascinate and repel other characters. this duality is vital to what characterises them as a threat: jullian identifies ‘the gothic…’ as a genre ‘where danger is so near to pleasure’. the sexualised traits of vampire women is what allures other characters to them and allows them to infiltrate civilised society. stoker’s ‘hostility to female sexuality’ as described by roth, bookends the events of the novel with the early introduction and later reappearance of the eastern vampire women of dracula’s. their overt sexuality is repeatedly described as purposeful, with explicit juxtaposition between their attractiveness and the threat that they pose: 'there was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive.’ these women are an extension of dracula that serve to specifically explore the threat of sexual fluidity, and the crew of light’s destruction of dracula ultimately eliminates that threat. van helsing’s justification of killing these women, 'then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love ... and man is weak', demonstrates that it is men’s inability to resist sexualised creatures that will result in this threat infiltrating england, but the responsibility is placed upon the women. while this echoes stoker’s suggestion that those who succumb to villains are at fault, it inevitably criticises women regardless. kaplan argues that ‘the sexualisation and objectification of women is not simply for the purpose of eroticism; for a psychoanalytical point of view, it’s designed to annihilate the threat of women.’ the threat that kaplan refers to here is that of the new woman, an early feminist concept arising in the late 19th century. the new woman is entirely threatening to established victorian values as she ‘was often a professional woman who chose financial independence and personal fulfilment as alternatives to marriage and motherhood.’ (carol senf) by acting opposite to the ideal victorian wife, the new woman challenges normal behaviours and expectations. this is another example of stoker exploring threats to the norm via binary opposition: mina is contrasted with the vampire women, including lucy, a contrast pitting an ‘angel in the house’ character against new women. mina’s pious, devoted and submissive wifely characteristics fit the victorian ideal known as the ‘angel in the house’, a title that originates from coventry patmore’s poem in which he depicts his wife as a model for all women. this stark contrast illustrates how female sexuality threatens the value women are attributed as it prevents them from performing their expected duties for men. having a threatening or taboo act committed by a supernatural figure is a hallmark of the gothic and serves to convey to readers that the act or concept is monstrous. female sexuality is a common victim of this trope during the early and fin de siecle gothic periods, but has since been commonly subverted and empowered in more modern gothic literature.

for instance, the lady of the house of love is the most conventionally gothic text in the collection, using traditional purple prose and exaggerated, decadent settings to frame discussions about heredity, sex and death. it features a countess, whom carter depicts as simultaneously being a victim and a villain. the duality of her character is a result of carter’s signature liminality, wherein the lines between what is threatening and what is innocent are blurred to explore female sexuality as a complex trait rather than fitting the ‘good vs evil’ binary that stoker attempts to attribute it to. much of her characterisation mimics that of stoker’s vampire women, but is subverted to present the countess as a sympathetic villain: ‘her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity... a symptom of her disorder.’ the girl’s attractive traits are made synonymous with a deficiency or sickness, as is the fact that men are inevitably attracted to her. carter suggests here that the girl’s reliance on seducing men for her survival is a hereditary curse, implicitly commenting on the generational trauma women face as a result of having to rely on their relationships with sexually threatening men in order to live financially comfortable lives. this mimics the way in which society relies upon established values and social norms even though they restrict and stifle us. the countess weaponises her sexuality, and while her motivation is survival, this act is conventionally taboo and is therefore committed by a supernatural entity, to traditionally characterise it as monstrous. while carter does draw on this typical gothic trope, she uses sympathetic language to paint the countess as ‘helplessly perpetuating her ancestral crimes.’ the ending of the story, however, mentions the first world war and carter hints at the notion that humanity itself is more dangerous, more of a threat, than the threat of the perceived supernatural ‘beasts’ that people project their fears onto. once again, carter feeds into kelley hurley’s idea that ‘through depicting the abhuman, the gothic reaffirms and reconstructs human identity.’ liminal characters, such as vampires or characters like frankenstien’s monster in mary shelley’s ‘frankenstien’ that exist between life and death, exist as vehicles to discuss the complexities of human nature.

ultimately, carter paints various traits and identities that are widely considered ‘threatening’ to be multifaceted and liberating instead, as she views the established values that they ‘threaten’ to be restrictive and in need of changing. in the preface to the bloody chamber collection, helen simpson writes that 'human nature is not immutable, human beings are capable of change', arguing this point as the core of carter’s work. she suggests through her writing that what is perceived as a social threat is often based upon what is uncomfortable rather than what is actually dangerous. her work is partially ambivalent in that it does not instruct what is right or wrong the way stoker does, but instead depicts societal relationships and allows the audience to interpret it. stoker’s use of transformations that involve protagonists always has them revert back to their original state, a reinforcement of the status quo. those who do not revert to the norms are killed or punished, eradicating the threat and putting readers at ease. the exploration of threats is central to the gothic as a genre that depicts and discusses transgressive behaviours and the implications they have for wider society. as put by punter, ‘the gothic is associated with ‘the barbaric and uncivilised in order to define that which is other to the values of the civilised present.’

i.k.b

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mygodyouredivine · 3 years

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The Hell in Your Eyes - 1

Summary: Loki doesn't meet her until two weeks after his initial imprisonment, but he knows he hates her. He has to hate her. Because the way she talks to him and helps him and saves him meals can't mean anything. She is too soft to deal with Loki, who is hardened with pain, pain, and more pain. And Loki hates soft things.

Have you ever seen the hell in someone’s eyes and loved it anyway?

Characters: Loki Laufeyson/(f)Reader

Warnings: mild mentions of violence, mild blood

Word Count: 3122

Next Chapter

Loki doesn’t meet her until two weeks after moving into his new prison.

In fact, he’s slightly confused as to how this mortal has escaped his notice — not that she is even remotely worthy of his scrutiny, but he distinctly remembered conducting a mental count of the tower’s inhabitants, one she is obviously missing from. Loki was quite confident he knew of every single person’s existence within his prison walls, yet here he is, staring at a mortal whom he’s never laid eyes upon, and it unnerves him.

Loki is not scared of anything, but he prefers to be aware of his enemies.

His gaze is wary as he stares down the unfamiliar face, memorizing the way her hair frames her face, the way her eyebrows are slightly raised, and her eyes, which are meeting his own with a mix of surprise, defiance, and a tint of fear. He grins.

Ah, never quite without the fear.

But then her attention moves past him and focuses on his brother — typical — and Loki’s grin falls. Thor is standing besides Loki, just recently interrupted from his enthusiastic explanation of what a ‘smoothie’ is. He now sports a ridiculously wide grin and surges forward towards the unknown woman. His shoulder rams into Loki’s, pushing him out of the way in his haste to greet her.

Loki decides he despises her.

“Angel!” comes Thor’s booming shout, his voice altogether too happy, too enthusiastic, too loud . He sweeps the woman — Angel — into a warm embrace. Loki snorts derisively, noting the girl’s chipped nails, painted a crude shade of black, the oversized, undignified shirt she sports, and the atrocious mop of hair sitting atop her head. He is utterly unimpressed.

“Ow Thor, you’re crushing my ribs.”

Her voice is bothersome, altogether too scratchy and too rough and too hoarse. She sounds like she just woke up. Every word she says grates upon his nerves, fueling his dislike. Loki wishes she would drink some water, if only to soothe his growing irritation.

His brother releases her, and she takes a couple of steps back, smoothing down her hair. Her fingers are entangled in the ends, and she pulls on them with the impatience of a child. Still grinning at Thor, she continues.

“What are you doing up so early?” she inquires. “I know for a fact you don’t have to train in the mornings to maintain your stupid godly body.”

As Thor’s booming laughter once again echoes throughout the room, Loki cannot help but roll his eyes. Pathetic . Just another airheaded girl infatuated with his oh-so-righteous golden brother. At this point, Loki doesn’t even feel disappointment. This is to be expected, after all. Thor is the one who is a hero. Thor is part of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Thor helped save humanity — against Loki no less. Thor never tried to subjugate New York, nevermind that Loki’s mind hadn’t been his own, that his body was hastily reconstructed, that —

“Good morning to you too my lady! I was just here with Loki, teaching him how to make smoothies. With — what do you call this? Ah, a blendifier.”

Thor’s voice is softer than Loki is used to, and in this moment he decides that he hates his brother’s voice much more than he hates this useless mortal’s. He drowns out the rest of their conversation, idly wondering if he can slip away while his brother is distracted. Perhaps he could get back to his reading; Midgard’s literature is undoubtedly inferior to Asgard’s but also infinitely more engaging than concocting whatever a ‘smoothie’ is supposed to be.

His train of thought is interrupted by Thor calling out his name.

“Oh, but you haven’t met!” Thor turns towards Loki — seemingly just remembering that Loki is in the room — and motions towards the girl.

“Loki, this is [Y/n], and my lady, this is Loki, my brother, the one I’ve told you about.”

Loki wonders what Thor has told her about him. Surely, if his previous activities on Midgard haven't spoken clearly enough, whatever narration of their childhood tainted with Thor’s tongue should have sufficiently warned her of himself.

But the mortal woman surprises him. She sticks out her hand and offers him a handshake. Hesitantly, he takes her hand and shakes once, firmly, then quickly releases her. Her hands are warm and soft — much unlike his. He wonders if they too can become as calloused as his own. Perhaps if she was forced to endure what he had. He doubts she has ever even felt a flicker of pain. No, pain hardens. She cannot have felt pain because pain is relentless and beautiful and pain is cruel and glorious and because with pain either you embrace it or you break and she is too soft to have felt pain.

Loki doesn’t like soft things.

“Hey Loki. I’m [Y/n] but everyone just calls me Angel. Or Angie if you prefer. It’s nice to finally meet you. ” Her voice doesn’t waver, but Loki can detect the underlying unease present. He doesn't, however, detect a lie. How interesting.

“Pleasure,” he deadpans, lip curing into a sneer. Thor frowns, his brother quickly moving between them, shielding her from Loki. Loki scoffs. As if he could do anything to her. Loki could not so much as breathe without permission. Here, Loki was at the complete mercy of his brother, the pitiful Avengers, and now this drowsy looking, disheveled Midgardian.

Loki almost laughs. Oh how far he’s fallen.

Thankfully, his interaction with the girl — Angel — seems to be over. She turns away from him, once again addressing his brother.

“Just remember when using the blender — not blendifier — to be careful. Make sure your hand is nowhere near the blades when you turn it on, and clean it with a sponge. Or just rinse it out and put it in the dishwasher. You know how the dishwasher works, yeah?” Her eyes are filled with sincerity and adoration and Loki hates it. For a brief moment, he entertains the thought of shoving Thor’s head into the blender. He doubts it would fit.

His brother beams at her. “Do not worry my lady. I know how to use the blendifier. Even if the blades were to attack my fingers, I assure you my Asgardian strength would protect me.” Loki is fairly sure the blades could take out a sizable chunk of Thor’s hands. The temptation to test out his theory rises again, and he stomps it down.

Thor is just as boastful as ever, never ignoring a chance to show off in front of others. Thor hasn’t changed a bit. Thor is still the completed, whole reflection of himself while Loki is just broken fragments. It isn’t fair. Oh but when has life — the cursed thing — ever been fair to Loki? His irritation grows and his hands clench, his fingernails digging into his palms. Pain. Pain is comforting to Loki. Loki knows pain and he likes it.

“Sure, sure. I know your stupid godly genes will protect you or whatever, but just be careful. I’m pretty sure you still bleed, and blood smoothies really aren’t all that appetizing.” She looks at Loki then, her eyes glinting mischievously, and winks. “Unless, of course, you volunteer to clean up as well, because I sure as hell know we don’t want to scrub your bloodstains off these counters.”

Loki isn’t quite sure how to react, but his fists loosen.

She’s soft and weak and mortal but she’s also snarky and sarcastic. And Angel is the first person to use ‘we’ and include Loki in a long time. He decides he hates it. He doesn’t wish to be included with these Midgardians under any context. He doesn’t need their pity, their false sympathy. In fact, Loki prefers the venomous looks of the other Avengers much more than whatever trick this woman is spinning. His fingernails once again dig into his palms and he feels the familiar trickle of blood sprouting from his palms.

Angel looks away and turns back to Thor, who offers her a bit of the ‘smoothie’ he has been attempting to make for the past hour. She giggles, a sickly sweet sound that makes Loki’s stomach churn, and pats Thor’s arm.

The blood running from Loki’s fingers drips onto Stark’s expensive, pristine floor.

“Thor, the last time you made smoothies they worked more as laxatives. I’ll pass.” She grins again, and Loki wants nothing more than to wipe that expression off her face. He wonders how she’ll look without the seemingly ever present light on her face. Perhaps her eyes will resemble the dull marbles that stare at Loki every time he looks into a mirror. Her gaze falls upon Loki again, but she refrains from addressing him.

With that, Angel turns and saunters away, her sock covered feet softly padding across the floor. Her socks are mismatched and worn and frayed at the edges.

______________________________

The woman is right. Thor’s smoothie is nothing short of poison and Loki tells him as much.

“This is absolutely atrocious.”

Thor’s eyebrows connect in a comical frown as he takes a sip. His lips pucker and he forces himself to swallow. “I completely disagree, brother! This is just what the Midgardians drink. It’s a part of their culture, something you should get to know well.”

Thor hasn’t changed a bit. He is as stubborn as he ever was. Thor would rather drink the entirety of the brown mush he has made than admit to Loki he was wrong. He wonders how Thor would react to Angel’s criticism.

Thor pats Loki on the back as he motions towards the mess he has made out of the kitchen. Loki knows Thor cannot feel the scar tissue hidden underneath Loki’s clothes, the raised edges and criss-crossed lines. He knows this because he hides it. He doesn’t need anyone, much less Thor, to know of the scars his body carries, and he doubts his brother would care. But Loki wishes Thor wouldn’t use so much force. He disguises a wince under a scowl and steps away.

“Brother, would you mind tidying up? I have a training appointment with the Captain, and I would rather not be late.”

Loki doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t have to. Thor is already walking away from Loki, his steps heavy and confident, so unlike Angel’s. Thor is leaving Loki to clean up his mess, another mess Loki had no part in making, and Loki is once again responsible. For he knows, he doesn’t have a choice. If any of the tower’s inhabitants were to come down and see Loki in the midst of this disaster, he knows they will blame him. Not that it particularly makes a difference, but Loki would prefer less hostility than needed.

With a wave of his hand, his seidr sweeps across the room, erasing any evidence of Thor’s ill-fated attempt at creating something. Loki does a once-over of the room, ensuring everything is returned to its original position, and as he moves to return to his quarters, a flash of red catches his eye.

Ah. His blood on the floor. The blood of a god — frost giant — cannot be as easily removed as the stains left behind in the blender.

Looking around, Loki grasps a sponge and, after again ensuring no one can see him, bends down to begin scrubbing his own blood off the floor. Loki doesn’t like blood. It’s too red and too warm and he knows its rusted smell will follow him throughout the day. He especially despises his own blood. It stains.

In the midst of his undignified scrubbing, Loki detects footsteps. He moves to stand up — quickly, but he is too late. Angel walks back into the kitchen, this time with her hair slightly more tamed and in a ponytail. She looks to have changed from her sleepwear to loungewear, sporting the ridiculously comfortable pants Loki has learned are called sweatpants and a shorter, cropped top. Her socks are still mismatched.

She looks at Loki, and with a start he realizes he is still on the ground. Loki Laufeyson is on his knees before a mortal, in the midst of wiping away his own blood from the floor.

Damn.

His throat tightens as he feels his anger rising, pulsating throughout his entire body. He scorches her with a glare, daring her to comment on his situation. He swears, Norns be damned, he will kill her. Regardless of the consequences, he will kill her if she says anything. Loki doesn’t care if he is condemned to spend another century on Midgard as penance, he will silence her. He opens his mouth, about to make his threat clear, but she speaks first.

“Well. I told Thor he would bleed. Did the big idiot leave you to clean up his mess?” She tilts her head at Loki, and he hates the way she is still looking down at him, hates the way one of her hands are on her hips, hates the way he can see a sliver of skin peeking out from between her clothes. “I specifically told him we wouldn’t clean up his blood.”

Loki bites down his retort. Angel doesn’t sound mocking, but rather sympathetic. He doesn’t need sympathy from a mortal. He finally rises and approaches her, looming over her smaller frame. “Get out,” he says, voice halfway between a whisper and a rasp. “There is no ‘we’ with you and I, and you will do well to remember that.”

Angel holds his glare for a second, but then turns away, and Loki waits for her to flee. Instead, she grabs the soap sitting next to the sink and holds it out to Loki. “Alright then, Your Highness. Have fun.”

Loki’s hand reaches towards the soap and his fingers brush hers. Her fingers are soft, just like her hands, and Loki wonders if her soul is as fragile as her physical body. Loki hates soft things.

With that, Angel leaves the kitchen a second time, and Loki is left to wipe his own blood off the floor, alone.

______________________________

He can’t get her out of his head.

The woman who was so damnably soft occupies Loki’s thoughts and he hates it. He hates how he can perfectly recall the color of her eyes, her scent, the way her skin felt against his own. He hates how she saw him kneeling on the floor.

Loki is sitting on his bed, just after rejecting Thor’s persistent invitations to go down to dinner. Thor insists it’s ‘bonding time,’ that ‘all are welcome,’ and ‘everyone would love to see him there!’ Loki isn’t an idiot. He knows what the others say about him. They don’t realize that Loki can hear their hostile whispers from across the room — and even if they did, Loki doubts they would stop.

His mind wanders back to the girl. Would she join in on their gossip? Do they trust her? Who is she?

Thor had seemed familiar and friendly with Angel, but Loki knew nothing of her. He could detect no magical presence surrounding her, and she did not look as toned or threatening as the Widow. From all he could gather, she had no place here. Yet, she was obviously a welcome occupant of the tower. Loki was intrigued, and he felt a begrudging curiosity surrounding her grow.

What was her history? Why wasn’t she here when he arrived?

Loki is distracted from his thoughts by his stomach, which alerts him of its discomfort. Loki has not eaten anything since the half sip of Thor’s smoothie, and hunger has begun to fester within himself. But Loki cannot get food yet. No, he must wait until dinner is over until he can go downstairs and snoop through the refrigerator for anything suitable. He has learned that this made everyone more comfortable. The Avengers could pretend he did not live with them, and Loki could avoid the hateful and tense environment that accompanied him wherever he went. Really, the hunger he feels is insignificant. He has dealt with much more, and he knows from experience he can go many moons without sustenance.

It’s past midnight when Loki finally ventures downstairs. He enters the kitchen without a sound and doesn’t bother turning on the lights. Loki had no need for light — he much preferred the darkness anyway. He walks towards the refrigerator, hoping that perhaps he could find some of the takeout left over from last week’s movie night. Ah, but Stark had thrown out the takeout yesterday. Loki just hoped that he could find something fresh then — but not too fresh, in case the others still desired it.

But as Loki opens the refrigerator door, he is surprised. On the top shelf, placed on the left edge, is a plate covered carefully with plastic wrap, a bright green sticky note plastered on top. He isn’t unfamiliar with the practice: reserving leftover dishes as one’s own. He found it childish, really, but he never took anything that was claimed — no unnecessary hostility was needed, and he was familiar with the screaming matches that often took place when claimed items disappeared. What he is unfamiliar with is the name on the sticky note.

Loki , it says, with a crudely drawn illustration of what is unmistakably his horns, followed by a smiley face.

Loki looks around, waiting for whoever had placed this cruel joke to pop out of the darkness and laugh at him, but there is no movement. Eyes narrowed, he scrutinizes the note. It’s not a script he recognizes, and he deduces it must belong to the woman — to Angel.

Carefully, he takes the plate and uncovers it, the smell of the food wafting through the air. Loki recognizes the scent as the dish the Captain made earlier that day. His mouth waters, unwillingly, and Loki cannot recall the last time he consumed food so freshly prepared. His fingers toy with the edges of the plate, debating whether or not to permit himself this pleasure.

He decides that yes, since the woman had clearly set aside food for him, it would be an insult to ignore it. Not that Loki particularly minded insulting his roommates, but again — the less hostility, the better. And if it ends up as part of an elaborate trap, well then Loki can say that he expected it.

He takes the food back to his quarters, and Loki truly enjoys a meal for the first time since he was still a Prince of Asgard.

He hates that he enjoys it.

He hates soft things.

And most of all, he hates Angel.

______________________________

Just because you are soft doesn't mean you are not a force. Honey and wildfire are both the color gold.

- Victoria Erickson

______________________________

Next Chapter

#loki laufeyson #loki laufeyson x reader #loki x reader #loki series #the hell in your eyes #thiye #loki x you #friends to enemies to lovers #reader insert #loki fic

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fedonciadale · 3 years

Note

I was really surprised 😯 that you had read the books way back when they were published. Your interpretation of the text (I am not talking about Jonsa ) is very refreshing and is vastly different to those that had read the books way back in late 90s and early aughties. The general consensus in the fandom regarding popular interpretations and theories had been devised by predominantly the ones who read the books even way before D&D thought about adapting ASOIAF and many of those character analysis and metas have trickled down into the present day fandom as well that anything one interpret that stands against the popular ones ( Hero Dany,Useless and Dark Sansa, Stannis the Mannis,Jaime and Hound being good whereas Cat being a villain, S*ns*n, J*n*rys, good guys assembling together to fight the Others etc ) is regarded as blasphemous and is never given room for discussion .

Hi there!

Yes, I really read the books when they first came out!

The reason for why I became that is simple. Back then I sort of lurked around and looked up theories and everything and half-heartedly believed them (three headed dragon, Jon and Dany die together for the light and all that) but I never believed them all (I liked Cat from the beginning and no one could persuade me not to like her) But I never liked these theories. I was extremely biased against them. So I always had the feeling that I missed something. Something did not sit right with me. Something was constantly nettling me. I could not point my finger to it though. And then season 6 happened and Jon and Sansa were reunited and it was as if some puzzle piece had finally clicked into place. My whole understanding of ASOIAF changed and Jonsa was the key that unlocked it for me. I finally had found tons of theories (not Jonsa but somehow related to Jonsa) that made sense and completely calmed my vague disappointment with the theories I had hitherto believed.

That is why I would say shipping goggles can make you see clearer. You know as with every kind of glasses it depends on where your focus is if you can see better or worse with them.

I’ve never looked back. I hope it has changed me to being more open about different takes on literature.

In a way this was easy for me. Because I never liked Jon€rys, and I never liked any of the other theories, and when the first theory came along that gave me hope, that it would not be the romantic ship of ASOIAF and that everything would be quite different from what the BNF assumed I eagerly swallowed it. Lol!

Thanks for the ask!

#anon ask #Jonsa #How I became a Jonsa #I really read the books when they first came out.

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thatringboy · 4 years

Text

The Way A Soul Lives - TWST

To write some Diasomnia angst has been a goal of mine for a while and seeing the new official book and the Diasomnia boys made me want to finish

I’ve only ever written angst a few times, so this was a nice practice. I hope I didn’t go too OOC here, but I think I’m good. I tried a new writing style here that I’m not that confident in, so feedback is very much appreciated!

Warnings: Magic, self inserted theories about Faes, fight scenes, blood, death and the angst associated with that

Word count: 1,615 (a new record I think!)

Sebek enjoyed the night shift. There was always something invigorating about walking around the Draconia castle when only dim torches and moonlight lit his path. A hand on his sword hilt, he quietly marched up and down halls, sometimes stopping in the Royal Library to glance at a book, and always passed by the rooms of the royal family.

However, his blood turned to ice when the Fae noticed a haphazardly opened window and mud tracked on the floor near it. He turned on his heels and ran back towards the room of his fellow guard, taking into account that the muddy footprints were not those of a humanoid.

~~~

Yuu sat down on the blanket and a frown tugged at their lips. “So why did you drag me all the way out here? It’s freezing!”

Cater laughed and pulled his coat on tighter. “Because there’s a Meteor shower tonight and there’s gonna be some fireworks to celebrate the end of Spring Break! Don’t worry, the others will be here soon and we can take some pics for Magicam.”

Principal Crowley had allowed Yuu Prefect to leave Night Raven College for the week of Spring Break and the magic-less human somehow got dragged to the mountains of Pyroxene where the snow had not yet melted. Yuu spent the week posing for cameras with Cater and Vil and learned how to snowboard thanks to Jack’s tutelage. Grim enjoyed the attention he was receiving during the trip and showed his gratitude by becoming a makeshift hot water bottle inside of Yuu’s thick coat.

Two figures approached the clearing. The shorter one talked with their hands in an annoyed voice. “All I’m saying is that you and the potato could really become a modeling duo! You two have the natural talent and certainly the looks.”

The taller figure grunted and sat down next to Yuu. “Not in a million years will you find me modeling sports clothing. Oh, hey Prefect.”

“Hey Jack.” Yuu sighed and looked up at the stars that were starting to appear. The constellations in Twisted Wonderland were different from those on Earth and they seemed to draw large coherent pictures across the sky. Vil sat down on his own blanket and opened his mouth to argue with Jack some more, but Cater closed his mouth.

“The show’s about to start!”

~~~

Sebek knocked on Silver’s door as quietly as he could. He could hear his fellow guard get out of bed and step to the door. Silver opened the door partially and opened his mouth to protest the rude awakening, but Sebek covered it before the human could make a sound.

“There’s an intruder.” Sebek whispered. “I can take the South stairwell to the young lord’s room if you take the West and go get Master Lilia.”

Silver nodded and grabbed his pen. The two men silently went in their directions, Silver to the west and Sebek to the south, and stepped into hidden passages. Sebek broke into a full sprint and exited the passage to see that Malleus’ door was open. A feeling of dread set into his stomach as he tip-toed near the door. What he saw sent a shiver of terror down his spine.

Standing over the sleeping figure of Malleus was a creature made of flickering and ever-changing shadows. From within itself, it produced an awful looking hand with claws the size of kitchen knives. Sebek moved without thinking and drew his sword as he ran to the side of the bed. He swung his sword in a graceful arc and removed the clawed appendage from the monster. It reeled back and shrieked horrifically, making Sebek cover his ears and making Malleus bolt awake.

The dragon Fae assessed the situation and dove out of bed for his staff, but the monster put itself between the two. The amputated limb shook violently in the air before it seemed to regrow itself. Sebek lunged with his sword and put himself in front of Malleus. “Go! Silver and Master Lilia are on their way! Get to the panic room!”

Malleus nodded and ran from the room. Sebek returned his focus on the monster. He had trained for this very scenario for a good portion of his life and he certainly wasn’t going to back down now.

~~~

The night grew colder, but the fireworks were worth it. Yuu clutched onto Grim’s warmth while Cater and Vil shared a blanket and watched the colorful lights explode in the air. Jack, having a naturally high body temperature, didn’t understand the discomfort of his companions, but thankfully didn’t tease them about it. He was sure that if he brought it up, his tail might receive a wicked pinch.

Cater had his phone up taking as many pictures as he could of the show while Vil had only taken a single selfie. Yuu sat in awe of the entire situation and was suddenly very grateful that the Principle had permitted this vacation.

Ew, was Yuu Prefect grateful for the actions of Crowley? The thought disgusted them and made them shiver more than the cold. Grim looked up at them “How cold are you, you weak human!”

Yuu frowned and hugged Grim tighter. “Very.”

Jack leaned forward from where he was sitting. “Here comes the finale! You’re in for a treat, you two.”

Grim and Yuu looked up to see a firework explode above them. A shower of gold sparks rained down as a second firework went off, sending red and blue streams everywhere.

“Truly beautiful.” Vil whispered. He got his phone out and snapped another picture. Yuu assumed that he would be sending it to Rook. Cater laughed and pointed to another firework that was about to explode. It went off and a brilliant lime green glow filled the night sky. Yuu agreed with Vil - the sight was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen.

When the lights faded, Yuu noticed that the stars were all out, blanketing the sky with billions of small lights. Jack laid down on his back and looked up at the sky. “What do you know, the Draconia Constellation can be seen this early in the year. That’s usually a Summer Constellation.”

Yuu looked up and sure enough, a large portion of the stars formed a dragon in the air. “Draconia, like Malleus’ family?”

Cater sat back as well, taking the shared blanket with him to the distress of Vil. “That’s the one. The longest Fae line in the world.”

Grim looked up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Vil raised his eyebrows. “I keep forgetting that you are not of this world. Let me explain this for you.”

~~~

Sebek could counter the physical attacks of the monster, but he hadn’t expected it to start hurling fireballs at him. He hissed and kicked himself a little bit whenever a fireball set something of Malleus’ ablaze, but he forced himself to keep his head in the fight.

Where is that lazy Silver? He should be here by now!

The monster jumped up and landed on the bed. Sebek pulled out his pen and fired a bolt of magic, but the mass of shadows absorbed the spell and made that horrible screech again. He grimaced and swung again, ducking under another fireball and was surprised that his sword made contact with something solid, but bounced off.

This creature, it’s changing to match my attacks! Come on, Sebek, think!

He grit his teeth and rolled across the bed, diving behind it to use as cover. If he kept the monster focused on him, it wouldn’t make a break for the door.

The door...

Sebek peaked his head up and noticed that the monster was loading another fireball. He ducked to avoid being hit and made a mad dash for the exit, throwing a rather large textbook that probably held ancient spells passed down from the Fairy Queen herself. Sebek hated to see such literature shredded before his eyes, but he decided that in the moment this would be acceptable behavior.

The monster recovered faster than he had anticipated. It’s claw lashed out as Sebek almost crossed the threshold and knocked him aside. His head hit the side of Malleus’ wardrobe and he felt a stinging pain in his right eye, but other than that was uninjured and got back on his feet. It slashed out again, but Sebek narrowly avoided the sharp talons. His energy was drained and even if he could raise his pen, he would possibly overblot from casting a single spell. He could run for the door again and risk impalement or stay in the corner and be burnt alive. Sebek’s mind, despite the chaos around him and his time running out, started to think of his friends at Night Raven College.

What would they do in his situation? Deuce and Jack would rush in head first, Ace would attempt to create a distraction, Grim would just made more fire and Yuu Prefect probably wouldn’t have even gotten themselves into this mess. Not to mention Epel would probably do any of those things based off of his slightly unpredictable personality. There was little doubt that Epel would also charge the monster, but there was no way of knowing for sure.

Sebek tuned back into reality as a fireball narrowly missed his face. The stinging in his eye and blood trickling down from his scalp made it hard to focus, but his adrenaline was still pumping. He was still standing. He was still fighting.

“Sebek!”

Someone called from the door. The guard - and the monster - turned to see a horrified Silver standing there, his pen clutched tightly. Sebek’s heart froze. He wanted to tell Silver to run, but Sebek’s voice became caught in his chest. The creature of shadows began to prepare another fireball, but Sebek’s body reacted quicker. He dropped his sword and tackled the monster. The two clashed until Sebek managed to force it out of Malleus’ window, but the monster held tight and Sebek felt gravity pull him down to the courtyard below.

~~~

“While most stars outside of constellations are celestial spheres of noble gases and other elements, the stars in constellations are actually souls.” Vil sat back on his hands and looked up at the dragon shaped image in the sky.

Cater sat back up, letting Vil snatch back the blanket. “Oh yeah! My mom explained this to me! Every time a fairy dies, they join their family constellation in the stars!”

“Unlike mortal souls that go to the Isles of Lamentation when we pass,” Vil continued. “The Fae’s immortal spirits are placed in the heavens to dance for all of eternity, or so the legend goes. Some stories say that the Fae came to Twisted Wonderland from the stars and so to the stars they return, but I for one just believe that this is a beautiful story.”

Yuu thought for a second. “So then what about shooting stars?”

Jack put his hands behind his head and got comfortable on the ground. “Nope, those are just regular comets or asteroids or whatever you call them.”

“Fascinating.” Yuu whispered. “Where I come from, stars are just flaming balls of gas in space. I shouldn’t be surprised that magic goes as far as constellations, but I am.”

Grim cleared his throat. “Wait, what about wishing stars?”

Vil put a hand to his chin to think. “You know, I’m not entirely sure. It could be that the magic of the fallen fairies could be the ones granting the wishes, but I don’t believe anyone is sure.”

“One of the universe’s many mysteries.” Cater’s voice dropped to be almost inaudible.

Yuu looked back up at the Draconia Line constellation. “There’s a hole in the dragon’s heart except for that one bright star, is that one Maleficent?”

Jack nodded, which was hard because he was on the ground. “The area around her is probably being reserved for her immediate family, so one day in a thousand years, Malleus and Lilia will join her and maybe even Sebek if he wasn’t too stubborn to die.”

Yuu laughed. “Yeah, that’s Sebek.”

~~~

Everything hurt.

Sebek was sure his arms and several ribs were broken, but other than that he landed from the seventh floor quite successfully. He attempted to sit up, but his body ached too much.

The shadow monster laid prone on the stone next to him. Sebek hoped it was finally dead. His inhuman vision let him see Silver and Lilia looking out the window he had tumbled from. Lilia vanished and reappeared next to Sebek, looking down at him with a sad face.

“Forgive my tardiness, young man.” Lilia knelt down next to Sebek and began to mutter a healing spell. A wave of warmth rushed over Sebek as the spell took hold over his body and he felt very tired.

“What is that thing?” Sebek looked at the monster. Lilia glanced back at it and shrugged. “I suppose a demon created to take the life of our young prince. You did well holding up against it for so long, I’m sure there’ll be a medal waiting for you when you wake up that you can show to all your companions at school.”

Sebek liked that idea. He imagined wearing a new medal proudly for a week to boast about to his friends.

“Oh Jack what did you do over the break?”

“I was just snowboarding at home.”

“Well I single-handedly fought off a demon and saved the young lord’s life!”

If it didn’t take so much energy, Sebek would have smiled from the thought.

Lilia finished his spell and offered a hand for Sebek to stand. It took effort, but the taller Fae got to his feet and leaned against his mentor. They began to walk away from the body of the monster, but out of the corner of his ever vigilant eyes, Sebek swore he saw it move.

Time seemed to slow down for Sebek. He shoved Lilia to the ground, earning an angry protest from the older Fae, and turned to face the monster as its claws sunk into his chest, tearing away his armor like it was paper.

The healing spell must have dulled his senses because Sebek didn’t feel any pain from the attack. Instead, he just looked up at the night sky and the Draconia Line constellation looked back down at him. The monster retracted its claw and Sebek slumped to the ground. He wasn’t aware of the pool of blood that was forming around his knees and he wasn’t aware of the blood curdling scream that came from Lilia’s lips, nor was he aware of the beam of magic that ripped the monster in two.

No, all Sebek was aware of were the beautiful stars inviting him to dance with them.

~~~

Yuu could see the stars from their bedroom in Jack’s house. After packing up for the night, Yuu, Grim and Jack said their goodbyes and returned to the log cabin. They had packed their things for their return to school in the morning, but while the cat-like monster slumbered peacefully on the bed they shared, Yuu found themself staring at the stars again.

They also found themself feeling a pit of dread well up in their stomach. It was cold like a clawed hand reaching up and tearing them apart from the inside. There was no reason that Yuu could think of to have this feeling, but it made them wonder if returning to Night Raven College would yield another overblotting upperclassman.

Yuu pushed the window open and a cool breeze ruffled their hair. They looked up at the dragon constellation and squinted before their eyes widened in confusion.

Yuu didn’t know how or why, but the bright star in the heart of the dragon was now joined by a smaller star that shone just as bright.

#this took me so long to write #i'm not that sure about the ending #but i like how the two scenes meshed together #TWST #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland writing #Sebek Zigvolt #Lilia Vanrouge #twisted wonderland Silver #Malleus Draconia #Cater Diamond #Jack Howl #vil schoenheit #Twisted Wonderland Yuu Prefect #Yuu Prefect #twisted wonderland Grim #ThatRingBoy Blue #ThatRingBoy Writing

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harperhug · 3 years

Link

In case the article gets paywalled:

What Good Is 'Raising Awareness?'

Just being educated about diseases isn't enough to make people healthier.

In 2010, a strange meme spread across Facebook. People’s feeds were suddenly filled with one-word statuses saying the name of a color, nothing more. And most of these posts were from women.

The women had received messages from their Facebook friends that were some variation on this, according to The Washington Post: "Some fun is going on ... just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of breast cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before people wonder why all the girls have a color in their status. Haha."

Oh, okay. It was for breast cancer awareness. Except, no, wait—how? The Susan G. Komen Foundation had nothing to do with it, though it did get them some Facebook fans, according to the Post story. It wasn’t clear at all who started it. There was no fundraising component to the campaign. And the posts weren’t informative at all. In fact, their whole point was to be mysterious. Maybe people asked their friends what they meant by just posting “beige” or “green lace” and then they had a meaningful conversation about breast-cancer screenings and risk factors, but I’d guess that happened rarely, if at all.

This incident is just one example of the nebulous phenomenon of “raising awareness” for diseases. Days, weeks, months are dedicated to the awareness of different health conditions, often without a clear definition of what “awareness” means, or what, exactly, is supposed to come of it.

Recommended Reading

According to a commentary published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, the United States has almost 200 official “health awareness days.” (The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lists all national health observances on its website.) And that’s not counting all the unofficial ones, sponsored by organizations.

The paper was an attempt to begin to investigate whether awareness days actually improve people’s health. Jonathan Purtle, an assistant professor at Drexel University’s School of Public Health, teamed up with Leah Roman, a public-health consultant, to see whether awareness could even be quantified.

“We both kind of anecdotally observed that there seem to be more [awareness days] than ever,” Purtle says. “In public health, and in medicine, we’re putting more and more emphasis on evidence-based practices. Everything should be informed by science in some way. We asked ourselves, has anybody ever evaluated these things, do we know if they’re effective at all?”

The answer: Not many people have, and we really don’t.

Awareness days do seem to be on the rise, by at least a couple measures—the researchers found that more than 145 bills including the words “awareness day” have been introduced in U.S. Congress since 2005, a huge leap compared with previous years. Articles that reference "awareness day" in the PubMed database have followed a similar, but less extreme, upward trajectory.

Trends in Attention to Awareness Days in U.S. Congress and Health Science Literature

But most of the articles Purtle and Roman found in their search (which was just preliminary, not a systematic metareview) were editorials or commentaries announcing or discussing awareness days. Only five studies empirically evaluated the effects of an awareness day, “but the designs weren’t that rigorous,” Purtle says. The best one, according to Purtle, found that on “No Smoking Day” in the U.K., five times more people called a quit smoking hotline than the daily average. “But that was about it,” Purtle says.

So evidence really is lacking on what good these awareness days do.

Liz Feld, president of the nonprofit advocacy organization Autism Speaks, says she has seen results from World Autism Awareness Day, which was April 2, and Autism Awareness Month, which goes on for all of April. The organization has raised more than $10 million so far in April, more than 50,000 people registered on Autism Speaks’ website, and more than 18,000 buildings around the world illuminated with blue lights on April 2 as part of the “Light it Up Blue” campaign. A spokesperson also told me that “Light it Up Blue” was a trending topic on Facebook and Twitter on April 2.

The money is something concrete that came out of the awareness month, but what about the rest?

“One-third of people who live with autism are nonverbal,” Feld says. “The power of a global blue-light movement is very strong. On that day, that is the collective voice of the autism community. That’s a show of power. The blue lights are really a voice.”

Here, "awareness" seems to mean sending a message, getting attention, and getting people to talk about the issue, at the very least on social media. During the week of the most recent World AIDS Day, December 1, 2014, AIDS.gov got the most engagement and new followers of the entire year, Miguel Gomez, the director of AIDS.gov, told me in an email. Perhaps not coincidentally, the organization’s HIV Testing and Care Service Locator got nearly triple its average traffic on December 1.

Social-media activism gets a lot of criticism, some of it deserved, some of it less so. (There's even a somewhat pejorative term for it: slacktivism.) On one hand, it’s an easy way to reach a lot of people, and it often amplifies the voices of the marginalized. On the other hand, changing your profile picture for an awareness day (something Autism Speaks asked people to do for Light It Up Blue) might just be the smallest possible unit of support for a cause. If not backed up by money or deed, it’s little more than lip service. But lip service is not nothing—if enough people do it, it could help shift cultural norms, as Melanie Tannenbaum wrote in Scientific American, about people supporting marriage equality by making equals signs their profile pictures.

“Based on everything that we know about our brains and their bafflingly strong desires to fit in with the crowd, the best way to convince people that they should care about an issue and get involved in its advocacy isn’t to tell people what they should do—it’s to tell them what other people actually do,” Tannenbaum writes. “And you know what will accomplish that? That’s right. Everyone on Facebook making their opinions on the issue immediately, graphically, demonstrably obvious.”

With a controversial issue like marriage equality, enough equals signs on Facebook pages could send the message that this is a common cause to support, and just maybe, gather more support, in a snowball-rolling-down-a-hill sort of way. The thing is, though, that with diseases, everybody’s pretty much already on the same side. There aren’t pro-cancer people who need convincing to come around.

“The question I would ask Autism Speaks or someone who's doing some sort of initiative like ‘Make your picture blue,’ is how they think that will trickle down into some sort of positive outcome for people with autism,” Purtle says.

So I asked.

“First of all, anyone who takes the time to change their picture, they feel invested, like they’re part of something,” Feld says. “That’s the culture we live in now. It’s a way for them to participate. It creates a sense of a community, it really goes back to that. People like to be part of something, look at the ALS ice-bucket challenge. They wanted to be part of something that was bigger than themselves. It’s free, it makes you happy, it makes you feel like you're doing something.”

But Feld recognizes that this isn’t enough.

“You’ve got to follow it up with something else,” she says. “What comes with raising awareness is a responsibility to do something about what you’re aware of. I always say to people, ‘April 2nd is great but what happens April 3rd?’”

When so much is vying for people’s attention, especially online, including the couple hundred other awareness days, even if you get people to listen, how do you get them to do more than just post a status?

There is a sociological theory called narcotizing dysfunction, which proposes that the more people learn about an issue from the media, the less likely they are to do something about it. Purtle and Roman posit that this might be an unintended effect of awareness days, that people might “conflate being knowledgeable about a health issue with taking action to address it.” It’s not enough to just say “this is a problem, and we need to do something about it.” There are a lot of problems in the world that need doing something about.

So in addition to awareness-raising, to try to get people to do something, Autism Speaks fundraises and asks people to sign petitions. “[When we try] to get corporate sponsors, I always tell people here, you can’t just go pitch this as a moral imperative,” Feld says. “There are a lot of moral imperatives. An effective awareness day has got to give people a window into what a real person who's living with autism is going through. My goal is for people to see the face of someone with autism on Autism Awareness Day, so that they carry that with them on April 3rd, April 4th, April 5th.”

Awareness days wouldn’t be so popular if there weren’t an appetite to address health problems. “People want to do something, which is good,” Purtle says. What he worries is that awareness campaigns’ focus on the individual—what you need to know, what you can do—could reinforce existing troublesome ideas about the origins of health, especially with conditions like obesity and heart disease, where lifestyle is a big risk factor.

A lot of people believe, he says, that “it’s really people’s choices that determine their health outcomes and if they’re unhealthy it's either: 1. They made bad choices, or 2. They’re just unlucky and have some genetic thing. These awareness [days] seem to be reinforcing that if you’re aware of the health issue, it’s a good step, and it might be even sufficient to address the health issue. That really flies in the face of the complexity of the various forces that influence a person’s health and a population’s health.”

Those forces include environmental, societal, and economic factors—things that can’t be fixed with knowledge alone. “I think if more people understood that, perhaps we’d see awareness days looking a little bit different,” Purtle says. A better awareness day, he thinks, would spread information about the prevalence of a condition and its risk factors, as well as policy changes that could lessen disparities or help people living with the condition.

“Neither Leah nor I think awareness days are necessarily a bad thing, nor is awareness a bad thing,” Purtle says. “Awareness can be a first step toward changing behavior, but in my opinion, more importantly it would be a first step to positively address the policies that impact a population's health.”

#personal #important information #call to action

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bisexualsforprompto · 4 years

Text

Miraculous Reborn (Maribat Injury AU) Pt. 2

AO3

One Next

Damian was surprised to say the least when his father informed him that he was brought back to life with the help of Darkseid on Apokolips. It hadn’t bothered him too much though, he kept his same cocky attitude and straight faced demeanor.

What did bother him, more than he cared to admit was his soul bond. He knew he had one, he wasn’t as careless as his soulmate who got scrapes and bruises all the time, of course they transferred to him, but luckily she had never broken bones so the League never suspected a thing. Damian hadn’t dared to tell his mother or anyone else in the League of Assassins about his soulmate, soulmates were a mere distraction. When he started living with Bruce he didn’t say anything either, he wasn’t quite sure how to bring it up. Before he died though, he knew his soulmate would experience the same pain as him. He felt guilty, not that he would ever tell anyone, but he still assumed that when he was brought back to life his soulmate was too.

It had been years and he quickly dispelled that theory, he never got injuries that he hadn’t earned himself. He was a little sad that the soul he was connected to was still dead, he felt somewhat responsible. Damian didn’t know why he felt these things for someone he hadn’t even met and would never meet but he couldn’t help it.

Damian wasn’t the kind to let things bother him but his dreams were infested with screams. He relieved being murdered over and over again, but from the perspective of his soulmate. It was different each time, sometimes his soulmate would be at home, at a restaurant, even in a grocery store but the outcome was always the same, his soulmate would lie there choking on blood and the last words they spoke were always, ‘All your fault.’

He continued not to tell his family about his soulmate, it was his burden and after all his soulmate could only be dead. There was no point, six years had passed and Damian had to accept the truth, his soulmate was gone and wasn’t coming back.

Damian had attended West-Reeves private school for three years, part of an agreement with his father. Jon also attended, but was three grades below him. The poor kid wasn’t even in the 9th grade yet, but that didn’t stop them from being their hero duo.

As Damian pulled up to the school (on his motorcycle, he was no longer the spoiled rich kid who felt so entitled to take a helicopter to school) he let out an internal chuckle. Jon was waiting for him, like he had been for the past three years, ‘some things never change…’

Jon ran over, pushing his dorky glasses up on his face, “Did you hear Damian?!” Damian rolled his eyes, “TT. What Kent?”

Jon was beaming while he informed his friend, “We’re getting a new student!” Damian sighed, “How exactly do you know that? And why do I care?” Jon pulled out his phone and wore a hyper focused look on his face as he tapped the screen. He promptly shoved it in Damian’s face.

“So Erica’s best friend Monica told her cousin Clarissa that her aunt, Principal Dunin, said that we’re getting a new girl from France! And you should care because she’s in your grade!” Jon grinned, unable to contain his excitement. Damian pushed the phone back into his half-kryptonian partner’s face, “I still don’t see why I should care. Seems unimportant to me, TT. Unless…” Damian tapped his chin, “Does she happen to be the daughter of some supervillain?” Jon rolled his eyes and shook his head, “Not everything’s about superheroing!”

“TT.”

“This girl could be super cute! Wouldn’t you want to know her?! I bet she’ll be your girlfriendddd!” Jon teased, wiggling his eyebrows. Damian gutted and flicked the boy in between his eyebrows.

“Hey!”

“I’m not so juvenile as you to think having a girlfriend is an insult, either way I don’t have time for a girlfriend, you know as well as I do that we have a job to do.” Damian huffed as he stepped off his motorcycle. Taking off his helmet and placing it in his school bag, Damian saw Jon starting to get ready to fire back a response. The young Wayne sighed and folded his arms.

“Damian! Come on, being a hero is fun but there’s other cool stuff out there too! And who knows maybe that girl will be your first ever crush! Ahhh I can see it now!” Jon squealed, anime stars practically glowing in his eyes. Damian rolled his eyes, “TT. Unlikely.”

Jon heard the first bell ring and pulled Damian by the arm, super hearing did. have it’s perks. “Come on! We better get to class. I can’t wait to hear about your new girlfriend!”

“I haven’t even met this girl. TT. You’re immaturity floors me Kent, it really does.” Damian retorted as Jon dragged him across the courtyard. Jon rolled his eyes as he pushed open the double doors to West-Reeves. They were greeted with the normal soft chatter that filled the halls. Most people were buzzing about the new girl. Damian resisted the urge to gag, he had to admit their private school was small but not so small that this girl should be the only thing people were talking about.

“I heard she was homeschooled.” Damian heard as he passed by a young blonde girl, maybe younger than Jon.

“Monica said she’s from Paris can you believe-“ Exclaimed a brunette Freshman.

“I heard French girls are hotter than Americans!” Said a muscular senior on the football team as he and two of his other toxically masculine friends fist pumped. Damian brushed the rumors off, he couldn’t care less, he dealt with rumors all the time, being a Wayne and all. He assumed the new girl would be overwhelmed by the attention, but honestly he didn’t care.

Jon and Damian went their separate ways as Damian walked up the steps to his homeroom. The midnight haired boy scowled at those who passed him in the hall and smiled, his demeanor hadn’t improved much since he was a child.

He was still the Ice Prince. The class addressed him as such as well as the media. Damian truly didn’t care, he wasn’t eager to please like some people. Let the people think what they want, Damian didn’t care.

Besides if they had been trained by assassins, died after becoming a vigilante at the hands of their clone, and caused their soulmate’s death he was sure everything would roll off their backs too. Ever since the League he was taught not to be sensitive. He had grown a lot from the murderous heir of the League of Assassins and some of his walls had been broken down, but most would forever remain up and guarded because of the soulmate whom he would never meet that he never told anybody of.

Don’t get Damian wrong, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to. Well, he didn’t, but it went deeper than that. The great Damian Wayne wasn’t afraid of anything, but if he was he might’ve been the tiniest bit afraid of talking about his soulmate. The prospect of them gave him nightmares, there was no way he would let them infest his day thoughts too. There was a point in which he contemplated telling Jon.

He ultimately decided against it. The boy would ask far too many questions for Damian’s liking and he was almost positive he’d tell Superman. Clark Kent would surely inform his father and then he’d have to deal with that.

Damian walked silently in the hall as he tugged on his backpack, realizing a part wasn’t fully zipped. He kept his eyes straight ahead and surveyed his surroundings in his line of sight and peripheral vision, a habit from patrol and his days in the League. Placing his hand on the doorknob Damian opened the door to his homeroom realizing he was the first one there. This was not surprising in the least, most of his peers socialized with their friends and waited until the very last second to walk in. Damian took his seat in the back of the class and pulled out his assigned reading material. Well, technically it wasn’t due until three months later, but Damian was always ahead so he could be prepared for anything. He cracked open his book and started to read. He noticed the students trickling in, one by one, taking their seats. He sat alone in the back of the class, so he didn’t have to worry about his literature being interrupted. He continued to read as chatter filled the junior’s homeroom. Just as he flipped the page of the new paperback he heard the door creak open and a cheery voice call,

“This is your homeroom! And don’t forget, you can always talk to me if you need anything!” He listened as a meek voice responded, “Thank you, I appreciate it.” The 16 year olds in the class had their eyes glued on the door as they knew it was the new girl who was speculated to be arriving.

He heard the class light up with a buzzing excitement as the new girl turned the handle. The students craned their necks like they were in some over dramatic play to see her.

Damian rolled his eyes and kept his eyes on the book, he knew if the homeroom was any suggestion that this would be how the new girl was treated at every class. He buried his head into the book,

‘This day is going to be horrific.’

Taglist:

@persephonebutkore @northernbluetongue @vixen-uchiha @caffeinetheory @18-fandoms-unite-08

#soulmate injury au #maribat #damianette

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xxgoblin-dumplingxx · 4 years

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Theoretical Knowledge

“Remember kids,” you say sitting on the desk, feet folded as you cradle a cup of coffee, “A theory is JUST a framework for understanding. So. As we discuss Marxist, Feminist, and Queer Theories, no. I am not telling you that you HAVE to use only those theories and you HAVE to see the world that way. So please. Please keep the tweetstorms to a minimum in class. Just remember. If you don’t understand the theories, you can’t argue against them effectively.”

You smile and set your coffee cup down. “That said, Tuesday, we’ll be starting with Feminist Theory. Please read the chapter before class and come prepared to engage in our preliminary discussion.”

College kids, mostly freshmen start to trickle out, gathering their things and clustering up a few at a time. You alternately loved and hated teaching lower-level courses. The amount of handholding that they needed to be housebroken for their upper-level courses got a little more astounding every semester but... Still. There was something lovely about helping them build a solid foundation for the rest of their careers.

You pause to answer a few questions. Careful to help them find the correct information. People for the next class were queuing up just beyond your periphery and you direct the stragglers to you office hours. You can feel the grumpy glare of Barnes, the mathematics professor and you cringe internally. You were willing to bet that you were going to have a shitty email waiting on you this evening. Some tripe about respecting other people’s time. Like it was your fault they’d shoehorned your 100 level classes into the Mathematics building. It was all the way across campus and there wasn’t decent coffee to be found anywhere on any floor. It was a miserable utilitarian clusterfuck of a building. Still. On some level it was super fun to get under his skin. The grump ass.

But, you were a good girl. You ignored his impatient harrumphs and tried not to glare at him when he slammed his stuff down and startled you. You erased the board carefully and quietly gathered your things as he sent an attendance sheet around the room, starting his droning on about Proofs or whatever the fuck. You even smiled, just a little when you caught his eye.

Numbers left you cold.

They reminded you of sitting on the floor in the hallway. Flecks of mica winking mockingly at you as you try to finish the times table drill through the tremors in your hands and the tears that are threatening to spill.

They reminded you of desperation. Frantically searching couch cushions for change. Just 80 cents so that you could at least get some fries at lunch. You’’re sick. Too sick to go to school but you can’t miss Algebra and there’s no food in the house.

Numbers are an immutable fact. You can’t change them. No amount of new information will change that 2+2 is 4. Or change the fact that when you run the numbers, you come up wanting. So you try, very hard not to think about how irritating Barnes is. How you hate the aloofness in his face and how badly you’d like to see him smile to see if it made his eyes look less... Less frozen.

As you strode across campus, anxious to get out of the cutting wind and stinging snow, back to your warm office and good coffee. Back on what felt like Terra Firma where you could discuss Russian Literature, and Freud’s Bullshit, and witchcraft, and stupid tv. Things you understood. Things you’d studied just for the sake of knowing. Things that had lead you here. You pushed the thoughts of Professor James Barnes out of your mind. He was as he was, and with any luck, it would only be for a semester that your existence would cause him any more irritation. Still. As you unlocked your door and settled behind your desk... There had to be something to be done about him. Something to chill him out just a little bit. You were just considering texting your usual gang of miscreants and rogue academics. You weren’t sure if it was for a war council or just for a drink. But you were saved having to figure it out when a familiar red head hurled herself dramatically across your desk.

“Please. I’m dying. Tinder sucks. Can we please. Please. Pretty fucking please go out. I miss out,” she says.

“Tasha,” you laugh, petting her hair absently, not looking up from your email, but pausing long enough to pat her hair, “You’re the one that said we couldn’t go out anymore.”

“And I was wrong. So. Very Wrong.”

“Well I’m not opposed but you know that if we don’t invite the boys they’ll be sad.”

“Tap room?”

“Sounds great,” you say absently, glaring at the missive that had just popped up.

Natasha arranged herself in a more dignified position in you guest chair and helped herself to a coffee and a snack, “Your face is making a face,” she frowns.

“It’s just my best Buddy over in the Mathematics department,” you sigh rolling your eyes.

“Barnes right?” she says taking a sip of coffee.

You nod and turn the screen so she can read it.

You watch her eyes scan the monitor and watch the frown lines materialize, “What the fuck. Like dude. It’s just flavored coffee.”

“Right?”

“Control freak.”

“For fucking real. Like. Ew.”

You roll your eyes and she picks up her phone, “Maybe one of the Boys will know something.”

“Maybe,” you shrug, refusing to respond with apologies.

________

“Bucky!” Steve said leaning on the door frame, “Come on. We’re going out.”

“No thank you,” Bucky said snorting, “I really don’t want to have to carry your drunk ass home. Or listen to you spout Poli-sci bullshit to try and get girls.”

“Well the girls we’re going with are gonna be completely unavailable and uninterested. We’re gonna hit the tap room and watch the game.” Steve frowned at his friend who kept glancing at his laptop like he was waiting on something.

“What did you do, Bucky?” he asked folding his arms.

“Nothing,” he huffed.

“Well if you scowl at your computer any harder it’s gonna burst into flames.”

“I’m just waiting on an email,” he said feeling uncomfortable under Steve’s scrutiny. Squirming slightly in his chair.

“Who are you picking a fight with now?” Steve scolded.

“I’m not.”

“James.”

“I don’t know what she teaches. Some social science thing. But she leaves the lecture hall a mess and reeking of flavored coffee.”

Steve rolled his eyes, “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” he snapped.

“Missing Yelena and taking it out on some random girl that’s just slightly messy.”

“I’m not.” he said petulantly, “It’s unprofessional to take up my time.”

Steve restrained an eyeroll with effort, “C’mon, ya grumpy fuck. You like Nat fine. And Sam is coming. You can’t just rot in your house and forget how to live forever.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah yeah,” Steve said dismissively, “Pick you up at 7.” And he was gone before Bucky had a chance to formulate a reply.

The truth was complicated. Bucky knew exactly what you taught. The Anthropology of Religion. Folklore. Witchcraft. He’d read everything you had ever written. He followed your Twitter. He just. He didn’t understand you. You had a mind suited for numbers. Logical. Straight forward. Applying science and advocating for greater understanding with reckless abandon.

But all you studied was... Stories. None of it was real. it was smoke and shadows. Illusions. He could only assume you were the same way. An illusion. You were pretty enough. Funny. But there had to be something... broken inside you. Something that you were hiding. Something to be wary of. He just didn’t know how to explain that to Steve.

Numbers he understood. They were what they were regardless. If there was a mistake, he made it. There was no one else to blame with numbers. They sang to him like nothing else did. They spoke to him and whispered secrets.

They made him think of being warm in bed with a book of number puzzles and a cup of hot chocolate on a snow day. The joy of solving a problem he’d been teasing at for days. It was happiness in its purest form. Accomplishment. Order from chaos.

You were chaos to which he saw no order. He couldn’t find a pattern to you. A nimbus of coffee and lost trains of thought. Bucky did not understand you and as he stared at his laptop, waiting for a reply, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He decidedly didn’t want to. And he couldn’t wait for the semester to be over.

Tags: @lancsnerd @blameitonthecauseway @thorfanficwriter @stevieang @etherealwaifgoddess

#Bucky Barnes #Steve Rogers #natasha romanoff #Platonic nat x reader #asshole!Bucky #Yelena #bucky x reader #fussy academics

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yasbxxgie · 4 years

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A Black Biologist Pioneered Animal Intelligence Research, but His Work Was Buried

Black biologist Charles Henry Turner was doing groundbreaking research into animal cognition at the turn of the 20th century, yet his ideas never gained traction on account of racism and his seemingly radical viewpoint. Many concepts proposed by Turner are now accepted science, and a group of researchers to say it’s long past time to give credit where it’s due—and to avoid the mistakes of the past.

A new Perspectives essay published in Science describes the contributions of biologist Charles H. Turner (1867-1923), an American zoologist whose “early discoveries are forgotten for all the wrong reasons,” according to the paper’s two authors, Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona and Lars Chittka, both biologists at Queen Mary University of London.

Turner’s work went against the prevailing scientific discourse of the time, as he explored and entertained the idea that many animal species were capable of complex behaviors involving intelligence, problem solving, and even conscious awareness. Today, we take many of these ideas for granted, but Turner’s research into these matters never got the recognition it deserved.

“It is deplorable that the now-popular field of ‘animal personality’ has taken so little notice of Turner’s trailblazing approach,” they write.

For Turner’s contemporaries, it was a combination of racism and skepticism of his seemingly outlandish theories. His “visionary ideas about animal intelligence did not resonate in the field,” the authors write, “perhaps they were simply too far ahead of the time,” adding that they’re “almost completely unrecognized in the current literature.”

A deeper dive into Turner’s work reveals some truly groundbreaking insights and approaches. Born in Cincinnati in 1867—just two years after the end of the U.S. Civil War—Turner, who earned his Ph.D. in 1907 while at the University of Chicago, devised some innovative experimental approaches to studying animal behavior and cognition. In the decades prior, biologists Charles Darwin and George Wallace discussed animal intelligence, but their work was based predominantly on field observations and inference. Turner, in addition to observing animals in the wild, devised controlled experiments with animals not unlike those commonly done today.

From 1891 to 1917, Turner published over 70 papers (!), including three that appeared in the journal Science. He studied the learning curves of ants, did a comparative anatomy of bird brains (finding similarities with the brains of reptiles), studied honeybee vision, showed that insects (namely silkworm moths) can hear, studied the hunting habits of sand wasps, did maze experiments with cockroaches (in which he claimed the bugs acted with “will”), and documented detouring behavior in wild snakes (he once saw a snake catch a lizard by climbing up a neighboring tree so that it could pounce on its prey from above). He also studied individual variation and intelligence in spiders, as the authors explain:

Contrary to the still-popular view that spider web construction is a prime example of invertebrates’ robotic, repetitive action patterns, Turner reported variation between individuals in adapting their construction to the geometry of available space and the functionality in capturing prey: “we may safely conclude that an instinctive impulse prompts gallery spiders to weave gallery webs, but the details of the construction are the products of intelligent action.”

Turner’s observations and experiments led him to propose theories about the intentional behaviors of animal, arguing that they are intelligent, conscious beings. Some of these ideas wouldn’t be re-explored for another century, including the suggestion of free will among insects—an idea not revisited until only recently. Indeed, his were highly unconventional ideas; it wasn’t until 2012, for example, that a consortium of scientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, in which they admitted that all animals have conscious awareness to some degree.

In Turner’s era, the traditional approach saw animals as creatures driven almost exclusively by instinct and held that any apparent intelligence could be explained by sheer persistence, among other processes, as the authors describe:

Early ethologists such as Oskar Heinroth, Charles Whitman, and Wallace Craig focused instead on innate behavior and imprinting, a simple form of learning. Where problem-solving was observed, such as when animals open puzzle boxes, behaviorists such as Edward Thorndike proposed that this materialized as a result of trial and error, not insight or understanding of the nature of the challenge. None of these scientists were interested in individual variation of behavior.

Turner, in addition to not receiving the recognition or respect of his peers, was denied a position at the University of Chicago. This snubbing was due to racism, the authors contend (Turner became a high school teacher after earning his Ph.D.) This limited his access to resources that could’ve pushed his research to the next level, such as lab equipment, texts, and research assistants; the lack of the latter prevented his ideas from trickling down to the next generation of biologists. As the authors point out by comparison, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), famous for his salivating dogs, trained more than 140 colleagues.

The authors “cannot help but wonder what Turner might have achieved if he had had comparable resources and manpower” as the “entire field of animal cognition may have developed differently.” To which they added: “One would hope that nowadays, a person of Turner’s caliber might not face similar adversity in terms of academic employment opportunities or long-term recognition of their contribution to science” but even today “very few scholars in animal cognition, or indeed across biology, are Black.”

Turned died at the age of 56 from a heart condition, but not before he made contributions to the U.S. civil rights movement, fighting for social and educational services among Black people living in St. Louis, Missouri, where he made his home.

Turner’s story is as intriguing as it is frustrating, a sad reminder of the immense contributions made by people who, over the course of history, have had to endure hardships imposed by systematic discrimination [racism].

#charles henry turner #amerikkka #racism #black scientists #black biologists #gizmodo #animal cognition #comparative anatomy #education

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yvkkao-blog · 5 years

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Blackboard Prompts

One lump post - might be in other parts of the daybook, but should all be here:

#1:

I have answered this in other entries, but the image that I had of London was one of a fantasy. London is a place where supernatural things happen. It is the setting for books and films. It must be a fantastical place, near mythical. That rather contrasted with the things people would tell me about the weather and the food in London, but I found things like the London fog charming. It gave me a visual of a city draped in a perpetual shroud of mystery. That being said, I knew virtually nothing about London beyond what I know of any big city. I have traveled quite a bit, and big cities often share some things in common, such as public transit, noise, and crowds.

I’m not expecting much of the food or the people, to be honest, but that is because I have a lot of respect for hospitality customs in America. People are often friendly and open to conversation. The food quality is dependent on the place, but usually, big cities have better food options and more diversity. This is not my first trip to Europe, so I have some idea of what to expect. I have not, however, ever been to London, so I might be surprised. I have doubts, though. I fully expect it to be as beautiful as I’ve always imagined, but my faith in people and food is not as rose-tinted. At last, though, I will be able to say that I have been to London, and I cannot wait.

#2:

My experience flying to London was odd, yet typical—an interesting contradiction, which is amusing to me in recollection. I arrived far earlier than I need to at the Pitt County airport, and I felt bad for several reasons. It was nice to meet everyone again, but I can never sleep before a big trip, especially before a plane ride. This is deliberate. I need to be able to sleep on a plane, or the discomfort drives me insane (as do the pressure changes). Usually, I try to sleep for the majority of any plane ride, from boarding through landing. However, TVs were invented, and not only that, everyone gets one on a plane. To commemorate the occasion, I admit that I watched a good deal of British-based TV/film on the way to London. It was a long enough plane ride that I had time to watch TV and catch up on sleep. It was probably one of my more comfortable long plane rides, so I have no real complaints.

As for the first day in London, the first day is always hard to acclimate to. I try to adjust to the new time zone as soon as possible whenever I go anywhere. The first day is always difficult (yes, it bears repeating). People are tired, hot, hungry, overburdened, lost, and overwhelmed in general. I did like getting out to see some of London that first day, however. I want to learn the transportation system as quickly as possible, but I’m not worried. The London Tube is much easier to navigate, from what I’m seeing, than the Metro in Italy (or most other cities). It’s quite time-consuming, I’ve noted. I try to factor in travel time when I’m planning excursions, and this might cut into my plans somewhat. We’ll see how things go.

#3:

I have to say, my initial perception of London has not really changed, even over this past week. Maybe I am jaded from an excess of travel experiences, but I have not really been shocked by anything. I wasn’t even surprised about the scaffolding mummy that is currently Big Ben, the clock tower, and part of Parliament. The same has happened anytime I have gone anywhere; it becomes a familiar frustration and feeling of resignation after a time. You cannot change your timing to such a large degree, so maybe if I ever get the chance to come back to London, something else will be in the midst of restoration.

I have been a bit disappointed by British tea, I will admit. I can be a bit of a tea snob, but I grew up with strong Chinese teas. I entertained the myth that British tea is without peer, but mainly, it seems to be unmatched in expense. At least the pastries are good, and I got a huge kick out of trying London cuisine that I have read about in books, such as meat pies and British biscuits. I think the thing about London that is superb is the architecture, the buildings and structures of old. I would never want to live in a castle—too many steps, and that’s not a mindset that will ever change for me—but I love to tour through them. Seeing a castle in the middle of a modern city never fails to make me feel like I’m standing in a fantasy land. It’s so much fun, and there is history, and more, in every stone. I want to see as many castles, museums, and art as I can.

#4:

I once got into a discussion about “natural” vs. “supernatural” vs. “hyper-natural,” and I loved that topic because the words themselves have certain connotations, and nothing is easy. For me, I make the distinction between natural and supernatural as reality versus fantasy. I try to be honest with myself and to keep separate libraries about the real world and the fantastical narratives. Nature is natural. A magnificent waterfall pouring over a cliff. A bird building a nest. These things usually happen without human contrivance. When not reading fantasy books, I often think of human designs as unnatural. We often appreciate those human constructions just as much. Things like Stonehenge and the Great Wall are precious to us because they are not naturally occurring spaces.

I looked at the London Eye, and it is incredible, but it is the unnatural mimicking something natural. If we want a “bird’s eye view” of London, well, we can’t fly, but humans can build things that will accomplish supernatural goals. We create folklore legends to explain things that defy explanation. Supernatural is something not natural but more than human. I love discussing supernatural tales, learning about where they came from and why they came about. Science often takes away some of the mystery, which can be riveting in and of itself but boring if you like narratives.

#5:

I miss air conditioning. I knew to expect it, but AC might be the sole reason I never want to live anywhere other than the U.S. That lack never gets easier to bear (unless it’s not summer). If I were to create a monster in a novel, it would be wreathed in flames and too hot to bear to be around. It would also probably be from a swamp—with roots from living in a floodplains area, but such is inspiration. I don’t think I would feel bad about acknowledging these things, either.

As for things that have gotten easier, getting to and from the Tube, and the buses, has gotten easier. It is such a common mode of transportation here that it is beginning to feel natural. I’ve only used one taxi, and that was near day two. I miss my car, though. The Underground is terribly loud, stuffy, and generally uncomfortable. I have come to associate travel with discomfort, which makes me think of Richard and Door. They can’t fly like Peter Pan. Even though Door can open doors, they often have to get around the mundane way. It’s nice to come home to creature comforts after a long time away.

#6:

The “monsters” in the novels came as no surprise to me, particularly with A Monster Calls. Ursula le Guinn and Lloyd Alexander, to name a couple, did something very similar in their writing, although I must admit that Ness’s monster was far more three-dimensional as a character, which I approved of. I love narratives and studying narrative structures, but sometimes this makes things predictable, which is also usually fine. Twisting a trope on its ear must be done right. I most enjoyed reading about the conceptions of monsters from “Monster Theory” and then applying those constructions back to our readings. That gave everything more depth, and I loved burrowing into the history, the culture, and the folklore surrounding these “monsters.”

Since I prefer the fantasy genre almost exclusively to read, I often think of going to see plays as a special treat. The play might have the same text, but the company might interpret it in startlingly different ways. I laughed so hard during A Midsummer Night’s Dream; that has always been my favorite Shakespeare play. It was shocking, and it was glorious. The “monsters” were rather more difficult to pin down in those four plays, however. I can make several arguments, but it often boils down to human nature. The same could be said for the poetry anthology. Poetry interpretation is not my strong suit. I prefer to look at syntactical strategies rather than semantic interpretation. A lyric poem is a beautiful thing, and I know that I want the poems in my anthology to make me smile whenever I hear them. Cacophonous discord can be hard to appreciate without the right context.

Time is trickling away, and there is still so much to see and do. It is hard not to be able to read to my heart’s content when traveling, but I know it is important to do all you can when visiting a new place you may never return to again.

#7:

Synthesis for Essay:

I have learned/decided that I want to dedicate myself to the study of narratives. This was not necessarily a new revelation, but the work we have done here has helped to cement the decision. Experiencing London as we read novels and other materials—often featuring London—has been a novel experience, as it were. For my synthesis essay, I plan to use narrative as my theme. I will draw in the study of our readings and class discussion and try to make connections to multiculturalism, children’s literature, poetry, and folklore. Since our readings have covered that spectrum, the difficult part may be bringing in my experiences around London. I want to discuss the bridge between fantasy and reality, and reading fantasy while standing in a real London location might be the perfect time to do so.

I have learned a lot, and I value trying new things. I would like that to be reflected in the essay. I think it is important to be familiar with the place you are trying to write about and/or include in your writing, but more than that, I treasure the little moments when something incomprehensible happens. When the bus breaks down, when the giant raven eats your sandwich, things like that. Those are the moments that make life unique and exciting. The setting is spectacular, but the people and other things in it define those moments. That’s why I think that level of attention to detail is so important in a book, even a novel that is trying to teach an overarching life lesson or twelve. Sometimes, it is the small things that happen along the way that are the most memorable.

My essay will probably include snippets from my daybook entries and speculation on narrative themes and structures. Everything has a story. Everything is a story. The plays we’ve been to, the novels we’ve read, the poetry we’ve shared, and even the London Dungeon—those all are narratives or use narratives. As participants and observers, we make connections and try to delve deeper into these connections. These, too, create some wonderful moments, and I hope that my synthesis essay will properly convey my appreciation for studying narrative using multiculturalism, poetry, children’s lit, and folklore as frameworks.

#8:

Things I will miss in/about London List:

-stunning architecture

-the Thames

-Chinatown

-museums

-parks and gardens

-King’s Cross Station

Things I will not miss in/about London List:

-London Underground and the Tube

-city noises and smells

-lack of AC

-crowds

Some of these things might seem like they clash, but I have my reasons. Why will I miss King’s Cross Station and not the rest of the Underground? Simple. King’s Cross is a hub, and you can go to many other places from there. The Tube lines tend to be more limited, and they’re packed and stuffy. Similarly, I won’t miss the city noises, smells, and crowds of pushy people. I have had to wear ear plugs every time I so much as set foot outside the flat, and the cacophony of people noises makes me want to jump out of my skin. I hate being crowded. I will miss all of the beautiful gardens and parks and historical structures, though. I love how beautiful those are. And I will miss the museums. I think if a city has a museum, it really has something that people should want to come in droves to see, and they’re often splendid buildings.

I will NOT miss the heat. I need my air conditioning, and that’s that. I did love the Thames and Chinatown. The sound of the water is always a balm, and I can never get enough authentic Chinese food. Most of all, I will probably miss interacting with people. I am a bit of a recluse, so getting to spend time with people beyond the classroom is always welcome.

#9:

I’m packing many, many, MANY photos and memories. This has been a unique experience for me. I usually travel with family members. The last time I went on a trip with peers was more than a decade ago. I had forgotten how much fun it could be. Those photos and videos might not be physically in my travel backpack, but I had resolved not to get too many souvenirs this time. In the past, I have been careful to get at least one present for my loved ones, something special. However, we’re all grown now, and we don’t need anything random. We’re all more interested in putting money towards the next big trip. Consequently, I have only a few keepsakes.

What will forever be in my London suitcase is my London suitcase, as it were. I have a travel backpack that goes on every big trip with me, and it is vital to keeping my stuff where I can keep an eye on it. However, I will be toting home a couple of very nice scarves and some books. I will not be toting home a couple dozen protein bars. We always travel with rations, but I’ve never noticed this tactic doing anything except encouraging us to eat out (avoidance). I will be different, of course. I’ve learned and done so much in London, and I think this will have a huge effect on my as a student. I now know what I want to do for research. I keep mentioning this, but it is important to me. And I want to come back to London someday. That might be the best endorsement I can offer. I will always treasure the memories, the people I traveled with, and the things we did. Those cannot be replicated, and I’m eager to share my tales of adventures when I get home.

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andersonsallpurpose · 6 years

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Swedish Vice (is there such a thing? apparently) visit the Archives for the Unexplained (AFU) in Norrköping, Sweden, and their collection of UFO reports from all over the world. I’ve probably mentioned them before because I think the idea is pretty cool, even though I’m not particularly into UFOs. The article is in Swedish, but I took the liberty of editing the google translate version a bit (a lot) into something resembling actual English. If you are the copyright holder and disapprove, please don’t sue, I’m super broke. Under a cut because long:

We visited the world's largest UFO archive

by Benjamin Wirström and Ingrid Altino, okt 19 2018, 5:54pm

In Norrköping there's an archive that collects all of the world's UFO-related reports and objects. Why?

It is a dark September evening in 1989. Mother Kerstin and her 13-year-old daughter Tina are in the car on the way to their home in Björkvik, an urban center just outside Katrineholm in Södermanland. Suddenly they spot an object in the sky, floating above a grove of trees next to the road. It is about five meters in diameter, flashing, and shaped like a saucer. Kerstin reportedly gets out of the car to take a closer look, when the craft quickly shoots off across the lake Yngaren on the other side of the road, out of sight.

Reports of "sightings" such as this there are thousands of in Sweden - about 200-250 come in each year - and all of them get filed in the world's largest UFO archive in Norrköping: Archives of the Unexplained, or AFU.

When we found out about the existence of the archive, we obviously went straight there to get our millions of questions answered. Why is there an archive for UFO-related items at all? Why in Sweden? Are they sitting on some kind of evidence that could potentially solve one of today's greatest mysteries?

The archive, it turns out, is located in what seems to be an ordinary residential area, just ten minutes by tram from Norrköping Central Station. For those who have not had the opportunity to visit Norrköping, the city looks exactly like every other Swedish city with around 100,000 inhabitants: picturesque, pastel, and full of bicycles. The fact that the world's largest UFO archive is allegedly squeezed in here somewhere among townhouses and playgrounds doesn't seem entirely reasonable, but after searching for a while we find a door that leads into the ground floor of a four-story house, subtly marked with "AFU"- the acronym of the archive. The door is open.

We enter a room that looks like any other office, with desks and shelves full of ring binders and books. Wherever you look, there's something UFO-related. On one wall hangs paintings depicting different types of flying saucers, next to old posters from the mid-20th century telling of info meetings on extraterrestrial life.

As we're standing there looking lost, a man comes in through the door behind us. Anders Liljegren, archive coordinator, has agreed to give us a tour. Anders is a 68-year-old pensioner and one of the founders of the national organization UFO Sweden in 1970, and later in 1973 the AFU. Today he spends most of his spare time supervising all the activities at the archive.

Anders tells us that the archive is about 600 square meters, stuffed full with more than 30,000 books, about 50,000 UFO reports from different countries in Europe, around 80,000 magazines, half a million news notices, and loads of different UFO-related items.

Before we begin the tour, we ask Anders about the plaques on the wall, which he tells us belonged to various Swedish UFO societies that used to be around, but sooner or later closed down. "Even the Stockholm UFO Association has shut down," he tells us. "They've been trying to revive it. Today there are two or three societies left within UFO Sweden. It's a fading existence, but we have the archives of about 120 former Swedish societies."

We enter the first archive, which Anders tells us contains documents from the UFO Sweden national organization and other material that's been donated to them. It feels a bit like entering a very organized underground bunker, filled to the brim with information that might prove very useful when aliens sooner or later arrive and enslave humanity.

Everywhere there are archived reports, news articles, and recorded material from the last 200 years. Material indicating the existence of some kind of life out there in space, which may or may not be stopping by our planet in saucerlike craft. Some of it is neatly sorted alphabetically and thematically onto shelves; some is packed away in boxes, waiting to one day be properly archived. As can be expected of a well-stocked archive, there is a constant layer of dust in the air, making you constantly feel like sneezing.

We ask Anders the obvious question whether he believes in everything on the shelves. "Believe in what, exactly?" Anders counters, gesturing to the documents around him. These subjects are way too complex to be able to say that you believe everything or nothing, Anders says. "Rather you have to look at individual cases."

"Some of us believe in a small piece of this cake, which the rest of us don't believe in. We're all different shades," Anders says, referring to the archive’s ten employees. "We have one guy who is very interested in alien contact cases, while I am more interested in abduction cases - in my opinion they carry more weight than those old contact cases. But we have different opinions."

According to Anders, "about 95 percent" of the reports coming in about people who have seen aliens and flying saucers can be explained with the help of science - often it's about people mistaking different light phenomena for something alien or paranormal. The remaining five percent of cases that cannot be dismissed are the reason why many, not least those at AFU, are interested in the topic at all.

The national organization UFO Sweden sometimes carries out its own investigations of reports to try to get closer to the truth. This summer they went door to door in Björkvik to try and find more witnesses to the event that the mother and daughter experienced in 1989.

We ask Anders if he is convinced that some UFO reports are 100 percent correct, or if it's more about being open to the possibility of something happening in a certain way. "What we're absolutely dead sure of is that either way, that woman and her daughter in Björkvik did experience an objective event," Anders replies. "Then there's a lot of things I don't think are worth taking seriously", by which he means reports of people who "keep seeing phenomena all the time". At the archive, they distinguish between these types of reports and more credible statements.

AFU is neither a group of fanatics trying to convince the rest of the world of their "truth", or a bunch of skeptics whose purpose is to try to disprove the submitted hypotheses and theories. The main mission of the association is to archive and preserve materials for the future, and try to approach the subject as scientifically as possible.

Anders leads us through room after room, past shelf after shelf. Some rooms are reminiscent of the science fiction department at a library, others look more like exhibition venues in a museum, while some rooms are more sterile with rows of tall white archive shelves. The majority of the books are non-fiction - the small proportion that is fiction is packed away in boxes.

The deeper into the archives you get, the more obvious it becomes why this archive became the world's largest when it comes to UFO-related documents - so big that aficionados travel here from all over the world to access certain documents. There's a steady trickle of donations from private collectors and libraries. Anders tells us that they have a private contact in London who works as a lawyer, but who in their spare time visits institutions to ask for material to send to the AFU for archiving.

It is also through private donations that the archive is kept afloat, as it is run entirely non-profit. "Right now, we're mainly living off donations we received a few years ago from the US," says Anders. "We received nearly half a million (SEK) from an American who sent us $60,000. So that's what we live off and have as backup funds."

Recorded radio shows, VHS cassettes, 35-milimeter movies, old news notices (both analog and digitized), books, newspapers, reports, correspondence, artwork - every conceivable medium is represented. Is it easy to become conspiratorially inclined when you're exposed to so many reports of abductions, flying saucers, crop circles, and paranormal phenomena? Anders doesn't think so. "I don't feel particularly conspiratorially inclined. It decreases with time, actually. We're taking in so many aspects of things, it would be impossible. I read through the conspiracy literature, but it holds almost no interest for me."

(Image: Fabric badges from Swedish UFO societies)

It is natural, however, that conspiracy theorists are drawn to an institution such as AFU - which is why those at the archive have chosen to keep a low profile. "We don't want conspiracy theorists and people with a transient interest," says Anders. "We all know how many hobbies we went through as teenagers."

Anders has never had a supernatural experience himself. His fascination with UFO's came when he was interested in aircraft as a child - a hobby he inherited from an older brother who passed away when Anders was only three years old. His brother left behind a heap of drawings of craft which piqued Anders's interest.

Five basement rooms, 1.5 kilometers of shelves and three hours later. Going through the archive feels a bit like a journey back in time to when you were little, when pretty much everything was still analog. To a time that wasn't necessarily better, but simpler. And as Anders says, "Why does everything have to be digitized?"

#ufo #paranormal #archives for the unexplained #conspiracy theories #interesting #sweden

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fakenigel · 6 years

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The Domestic Cold War and Reagan’s California (1967-1975)

It got by George Washington

The ideas of justice, liberty, and equality

. . .

Ronald Reagan, it got by him

Hollyweird

Acted like a actor

Acted like a liberal

Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California

Now he acts like somebody might vote for him for president

-Gil Scott-Heron, “Bicentennial Blues,” The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron (1975)

Reagan’s California

Ronald Reagan is associated with many of the most fundamental changes that have taken place in American politics over the last five decades. The “Reagan Revolution” (along with Thatcherism, the UK’s counterpart) is often seen as being responsible for the neoliberal turn that American politics and economics have taken since the 1980s. Reagan ushered in anti-union and pro-business policies that fall under the banner of supply-side economics, or more euphemistically, “trickle-down economics.” Reagan also did his part to revolutionize the American security state. The Iran-Contra scandal, in which Reagan administration officials were caught selling arms to Iran (who was under an arms embargo) in order to fund the Nicaraguan anti-communist Contra fighting forces, went a long way in institutionalizing the use of private military contractors and defense companies.[1] Reagan accomplished all of this as the president of the United States, an office he held from 1981 to 1989.

A less examined portion of Reagan’s political career, but one in which he and his political associates also affected extensive political change, is his tenure as the governor of California. Reagan served two consecutive terms as the governor of California, from 1967 until 1975. The Watts riots in Los Angeles occurred two years prior to his first term in 1965. Thus, as a Republican, law-and-order governor, Reagan presided over some of the most tumultuous moments of California and the United States’ history. These include, but are not limited to:

1967 - Summer of Love; thousands of youths migrate from around the United States to California’s Bay Area to be a part of a burgeoning counterculture movement

June 6, 1968 - Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy; occurs roughly five years after his brother’s, John F. Kennedy’s assignation, three years after the assassination of Malcolm X, and just over two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

January 17, 1969 – Black Panther shootout with rival United Slaves (US) organization; shootout left two Panthers (Bunchy Carter and John Huggins) dead, US and their leader Ron Karenga believed to possibly be opportunistically working with state and federal security apparatus to neutralize the Black Panther Party.

August 9, 1969 – Manson Family murders Sharon Tate and four others; Charles Manson and his white youth followers lead to association of the psychedelic, hippie and drug counterculture with violence.

December 9, 1969 – LAPD instigates an early morning shootout by initiating a surprise raid on the Los Angeles Black Panther Party headquarters; raid comes only 5 days after Fred Hampton was assassinated in Chicago by a similar early morning unannounced “raid”; Panthers survive shootout by shooting back and holding their ground until media and the public arrive to scene.

August 7, 1970 – Jonathan P. Jackson killed in attempt to kidnap and take hostages from a Marin County, California courtroom, which he planned to trade for the release of his brother and their transportation to a county supportive of the Black Panther Party;

August 21, 1971 – George Jackson, probably the most well-known face of California’s revolutionary prisoner movement, is killed by guards in San Quentin prison during an alleged escape attempt; controversy exists over the facts surrounding the escape attempt, particularly how he supposedly smuggled in a pistol without the guards seeing, as well as the circumstances of the guard’s gunshots that took his life.

December 16, 1971 – California Correctional Officers Association (CCOA) in conjunction with Attorney General Evelle Younger’s office attempt to frame Soledad psychiatrist, Dr. Frank Rundle (a self-ascribed “New Republic liberal”[2]) for two killings of Soledad guards after he publicly advocated for prison reform, especially for prisoners in need of mental health treatment; conspiracy is discovered because the prisoner (Tony Pewitt) who was used by the state to frame Rundle refused to go through with the plan and alerted him, at which point Rundle contacted private detectives and media.

1973-1975 – Rise and demise of the Symbionese Liberation Army; a Maoist group led by an escaped black convict, Donald DeFreeze, and comprised of majority white student radicals goes on a highly publicized string of violent acts in the name revolution, including the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, the college-aged heir to the Hearst family fortune.

This small list of political violence during Reagan’s governorship is by no means exhaustive, but it does comprise many of the better known incidents. One trend that is clear is that as time went on, the radical left became associated with greater amounts of violence, both as the supposed aggressors and as recipients of state violence. All of this contributed to the sentiment that many participants in the 1960s and 1970s radical left today hold themselves, that America’s radical left was predisposed toward counterproductive and self-destructive violence. This violence soured the view of the radical left in the eyes of the general American public and led to defeat of the movement. The trend of increasing violence applies to all sects of the radical left—the black power movement, the youth student movement, hippies, Maoists, radical prisoners, and even “defectors” from wealthy families who ended up involved in radical left activities (like Patricia Hearst). The combined effect of all of this violence was the delegitimation and sundering of radical left politics.

Charles Manson was associated with the hippie youth counterculture.[3] His crimes marked a shift from the initial, positive, psychedelic Summer of Love to the mood after the Manson murders and into the 1970s which was much darker. By the time Manson was arrested, the psychedelic positivity associated with LSD in the late 1960s had been replaced by a heroin and amphetamine fueled paranoia and pessimism. In the case of the Black Panther Party, it is more evident that authorities were attempting to eliminate the organization and that instigating violence against the Panthers (such as the LAPD shootout) was a method toward this end.

The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) came along in the mid-1970s and seemed to synthesize these separate currents into one organization. The SLA was a self-described Maoist insurgency group headed by a black escaped prisoner (Donald DeFreeze) and composed of radical students from multiple ethnic backgrounds (but primarily middle class whites). The group kidnapped Patricia Heart and forced her to commit crimes with the organization, such as bank robbery and car theft. The SLA provided the final proof to the public that the radical left had devolved into something unnecessarily violent, shortsighted, and counterproductive. These are ideal circumstances for a conservative law and order governor to prosper. And prosper Reagan did. Reagan won two elections and chose not to run for a third term before eventually becoming the country’s president in 1980.

Amidst this period of sustained political violence and turmoil Governor Reagan greatly increased the power of domestic police and intelligence in the state of California. To be more specific, it appears that Reagan (with assistance from Richard Nixon’s presidential administration) ran a counterinsurgency program designed to neutralize and delegitimation the radical left opposition throughout the state. The term counterinsurgency, a term primarily associated America’s foreign military operations, is important here. While domestic police are, in theory, not supposed to care about private citizens’ political beliefs, military counterinsurgency doctrines are precisely concerned with the political beliefs of their targets. In fact, in a counterinsurgency warfare, elimination of an ideology may be seen as more important and vital than elimination of particular individuals and leaders.

This reality is ignored because of an American exceptionalist attitude and bias that tends to whitewash the nature of domestic intelligence practices and operations. This whitewashed view says the government security apparatus (from the federal agencies to local police) operates by different rules domestically than it does internationally. One way this manifests itself is in the idea that anyone who is victimized or killed by the domestic security apparatus deserved such treatment on some level, even if the public still widely condemns the action. It is understood that in modern warfare, beginning primarily with Vietnam, the United States and its allies assassinate important enemy officials outside of direct engagement and that these assassinations are carried out to hamper the enemy’s effectiveness (a macro consideration)—not in response to particular actions carried out by the individuals (a micro consideration). For example, the 2008 joint Israeli and U.S. car bomb assassination of Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah, known to be a particularly intelligent and effective military tactician, did not come in the course of combat, it was carried out clandestinely away from an active battlefield. The assassination received condemnation from some Western allies,[4] but the methodology was clear. Mughniyah was killed for simply being a highly skilled leader for the enemy. In the academic literature on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, such tactics are vividly referred to as attempts at “leadership decapitation.” There is hesitation from domestic observers within the United States to ascribe such simple and undemocratic motivations for the repression (via assassination and incarceration) that the Black Panther Party and others faced, but the facts of the situation suggest that the Panthers faced a concerted leadership decapitation effort from the United States government, and much of this was executed by and through Reagan’s gubernatorial administration.

I argue that the sustained counterinsurgency operations against California’s radical leftists in the 1960s and 1970s have more in common with the American intelligence community’s counterinsurgency efforts overseas in theaters like Italy, Latin America, and Indochina (where the Vietnam War was raging) than they have in common with more sanitized narratives that take the purported actions and statements of groups like the SLA at face value. Historical investigation has shown that the Western powers, as well as lesser powers like the authoritarian Latin American regimes of the era, operated under the same general counterinsurgency doctrine. This doctrine was developed by a myriad of anti-communist hardliners from a variety of countries, but British, French, American, and former-Nazi intelligence and military personnel seem to have been key in the intellectual development of the doctrine. Declassified documents and information gathered from governmental and non-governmental investigations have revealed that a key element of this doctrine was that Western intelligence operatives ought to implicate communists (and the wider radical left) in terrorism and indiscriminate violence. The function of this violence would be to strengthen the existing status quo by discrediting the left and driving a scared and disoriented public into the arms of the state and its security apparatus. The existence of such activities in the so-called Second and Third Worlds are well established (Operation CONDOR in Latin America and the Phoenix Program in Vietnam and Indochina), but irrefutable evidence of similar tactics was discovered by Italian parliamentary investigators in the early 1990s. Italian investigators concluded that neo-fascist elements of the Italian state and security apparatus committed terrorist attacks in the 1960s through 1980s that were wrongly attributed to anarchists and communists, as well as clandestinely encouraging other terrorist attacks and forms of political violence.

There is an immense value to this type of inquiry. There is an obvious and inherent value in gaining a deeper understanding of how modern states (and private organizations) engage in repression and stamp out dissent. This ought to interest anyone with even a passing interest in radical, left, or anti-capitalist politics. Further, these tactics were deployed against non-revolutionary liberal reformists, not just radical leftists. Thus, this research should give anyone who is interested in genuine democracy, representative or otherwise, serious pause. This research also challenges existing narratives of the decline of the American radical left. By challenging the basis of California’s political violence of the 1960s and 1970s and suggesting that the state played a more prominent role in committing and encouraging violence than is commonly understood, one challenges the narrative that the radical left caused its own downfall by sliding toward violence. Such an investigation into American political violence of the 1960s and 1970s is overdue. I hope to spur such an investigation and conversation.

The American security apparatus invests in public relations perpetuate the myth that organizations like the FBI and CIA operate within the confines of the law domestically. Juan Bosch, the democratically-elected president of the Dominican Republic who was deposed in a coup orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson’s administration, argued that America had developed a government with power and decision-making bifurcated along domestic and international lines.[5] Bosch argued that the Pentagon (he uses the term as a catch-all for the American security establishment), what he saw as the ultimate power in the United States, had accepted to stay out of domestic affairs as long as it was given absolute supremacy in international affairs. But incidents like the Watts riot (and the other urban ghetto uprisings), as well as growing radicalism in America’s middle class white youth, led the American security establishment to conceive external and internal “insurgency” as one and the same. Churchill quotes Lawrence from The New State Repression (1985) concerning this conceptual shift in security and intelligence:

[I]nsurgency [was no longer viewed as] an occasional erratic idiosyncrasy of people who are oppressed and exploited, but a constant occurrence—permanent insurgency, which calls for a strategy that doesn’t simply rely on a police force and a national guard and an army that can be called out in an emergency, but rather a strategy of permanent repression as the full-time task of security forces.[6]

Churchill presents the quote from Lawrence in the context of domestic politics, but this shift in counterinsurgency strategy was taking place globally, in part because the United States (after World War II) was in a position of power and coordination over the rest of the world’s capitalist countries and their security agencies. The shift was simply that insurgency was no longer viewed as an episodic threat. The threat of insurgency, specifically communist, was constant, and thus required constantly active repressive forces to combat it. Reagan takes control of California amidst conceptual shift. The individuals that Reagan goes on to appoint to various position within California’s security apparatus reflect this conceptual shift as well as its international scope. California’s security apparatus under Reagan employed many international Cold Warriors. They brought their counterinsurgency expertise from theaters of “hot” war back home; not enough attention has been paid to how this expertise was deployed domestically. If there is an “American exceptionalist” conception of domestic policing, then these activities would be precisely the type that would be missing from, or obscured within, the mainstream historical record and popular consciousness. These are a few of the Cold Warriors and intelligence veterans that worked in California within Reagan’s administration:

Evelle Younger. Younger served as California’s Attorney General from 1971 until 1979. He began his career as a promising young FBI Special Agent under J. Edgar Hoover. He joined the precursor of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), at the age of 24. Prior to his appointment to the position of California’s Attorney General, Younger was Los Angeles’s District Attorney and presided over the prosecution of Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Younger was directly involved in the establishment and operation of governmental programs like the California Organized Crime and Intelligence Branch (OCCIB) as well as LAPD’s notorious Criminal Conspiracy Section (CCS).

Louis Giuffrida. Giuffrida was chosen by Reagan to head the California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI), a program established by Reagan during his final gubernatorial term to develop and disseminate

effective methods of neutralizing California’s then-vibrant radical left and to ‘train police forces from all across the U.S. and from many other countries in counterinsurgency . . . tasks that could not, at that time, be conducted at FBI headquarters or the International Police Academy, or other federal police training institutions.’[7]

Giuffrida had been an army counterintelligence officer, and according to Churchill, had long been “associated with organizations on the extreme right.”[8] For a thesis he wrote while attending the US Army War College, Guiffrida discussed and planned for “the establishment of concentration camps to imprison potentially millions of black Americans in the event of a revolutionary uprising in the United States.”[9]

William Hermann. Herrmann is a mysterious figure. He served as the primary counterintelligence advisor for Reagan while he was governor, but he held a multitude of positions over his shadowy career. According to Schreiber, Hermann also worked for the System Development Corporation, the Stanford Research Institute, the Rand Corporation, and the Hoover Center on violence.[10] Hermann also worked with another Reagan confidante, Dr. Earl Brian (Reagan’s Secretary of Health), at the controversial Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, a behavior modification program hosted at UCLA.[11] Hermann was publicly opposed to the kinds of social protest that were taking place within California’s black and youth populations at the time.[12]

Dr. Earl Brian. Brian was Reagan’s Secretary of Health. Brian was a proponent of behavior modification (what Schreiber suggests is a euphemism for mind control which was something of an obsession for intelligence agencies during the 1960s) in the pursuit of crime prevention.[13] Under Reagan’s securitized California, open advocates for racial and economic equality were essentially criminals, not to mention the actual radical prison reform movement that was taking place.

Colton Westbrook. Westbrook is unique. Unlike the other characters listed previously, Westbrook did not have a personal relationship with Reagan. He was also black. But Westbrook is important because of his background and role that he played within California’s security and intelligence apparatus. Westbrook appears to have been the undercover handler of Donald DeFreeze prior to his escape from formation of the Symbionese Liberation Army and escape from prison. This occurred while Westbrook was creating and running the Black Cultural Association (BCA) at Vacaville Medical Facility. Schreiber describes the BCA as

ostensibly an education program designed to instill black pride in Vacaville inmates. In reality, it became a cover for an experimental project to explore the extent to which unstable or susceptible prisoners could be controlled for the purpose of infiltration of Bay Area radical groups.[14]

Westbrook is alleged to have been a CIA agent, though he denied this charge. Other aspects of Westbrook’s known employment history suggest that he was employed with the CIA in some fashion. From 1967 to 1969, Westbrook was an advisor to the South Vietnamese Police Special Branch. Westbrook’s cover was that he was working for the Pacific Architects and Engineers (PA&E), a known CIA front corporation. Westbrook’s time in South Vietnamese overlaps with the time period when the Phoenix Program was active. The Phoenix Program was a Vietnam War-era clandestine American counterinsurgency, assassination, and psy-ops program designed to weaken the Vietcong through methods like assassination. If overseas methods of counterinsurgency were transmuted back to the domestic front, then individuals like Westbrook would have been the personnel capable of completing such a transportation.

A fair rebuttal to concern over the presence of foreign intelligence operatives finding employment in Reagan’s administration is that domestic law enforcement is a perfectly logical career for any veteran of the armed services. If one looked at the demographics of individuals in high ranking domestic law enforcement officials across the country during this era, one would find many veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. But Schreiber poignantly describes the likelihood of someone like Colston Westbrook ending up as the head of the Black Cultural Association:

Of all the “outside guest coordinators” that could have been chosen for the Black Cultural Association, such as people with experience in social work, criminal justice, or organizations advocating prisoner rights, Vacaville wound up with Colston Westbrook, undercover liaison for the CIA during the Phoenix Program. And he was handpicked by former psy-ops officer William Herrmann, then advising Governor Ronald Reagan on counterintelligence. And it happened at the height of the black prisoner reform movement, right after the CIA’s Operation CHAOS provided funds to Vacaville, which was an ongoing MKULTRA and MKSEARCH site for experimentation on prisoners.[15]

Several of these individuals continued working with Reagan during his time as POTUS, indicating that these were actual relationships, and not disinterested political appointments. In 1981 Reagan appointed Guiffrida to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Brian and Hermann were both also given positions in Reagan’s White House administration, but both would end up marred by scandal.[16] Given these individuals roles in America’s foreign military and intelligence apparatus, and given Lawrence’s suggestion that insurgency went from being conceived of as an episodic problem to a constant threat during this time, the presence of such counterinsurgency experts in close proximity to one of the “ground zeroes” of America’s radical left and left counterculture is striking. Clearly Reagan’s gubernatorial administration prioritized the black power movement (generally represented by the Black Panther Party) and largely white, student, youth radical movement (personified by Students for a Democratic Society and the hippies) as threats to state and national “public order.” The backgrounds, skills, and expertise of individuals who held security and intelligence positions during Reagan’s tenure reflect this prioritization.

Belew discusses the way that many right-wing, anti-communist paramilitary organizations during this time were populated with Vietnam veterans who wanted to continue the anti-communist effort at home in the United States.[17] If Belew’s convincing analysis is correct, then it is reasonable to suspect that law enforcement may have been seen by some superpatriotic veterans as a way to continue the war against communist subversion at home. While civilians tend to see a clear distinction between the purpose of (and tactics utilized by) domestic police and the military when its engaged in conflict overseas, the domestic law enforcement personnel with overseas military and intelligence anti-communist backgrounds may have seen their purpose as a continuation of their overseas efforts, just with a different set of constraints and rules of engagement, rather than as a distinctly different activity.

[1] Erik Prince, perhaps America’s (and the world’s) best known private warrior, learned much of what he knows from Oliver North, the Reagan official who supposedly masterminded the Iran-Contra strategy.

[2] Don Jelinek, “The Soledad Frame-Up,” The San Francisco Bay Guardian, June 22, 1972, 4.

[3] Despite Charles Manson espousing racist beliefs and the notion that he hoped to start a race war with his murders, Manson and his crimes were associated with the white youth counterculture.

[4] Meron Rapoport, “Italian FM Says Mughniyah Killing in Damascus Was Act of ‘Terror,’” Haaretz, February 22, 2008, https://www.haaretz.com/1.4994953.

[5] Juan Bosch and Helen Lane, Pentagonism: A Substitue for Imperialism (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1968), 51.

[6] Ward Churchill, “The Security Industrial Complex,” in The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 47.

[7] Churchill, 48.

[8] Churchill, 48.

[9] Matthew Cunningham-Cook, “Contingency Plans,” Jacobin, Spring 2018, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/contingency-plans.

[10] Brad Schreiber, Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA (New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016).

[11] Schreiber

[12] Schreiber

[13] Schreiber

[14] Schreiber

[15] Schreiber

[16] “Eventually, both Brian and Herrmann worked with Reagan when he became president. In a highly complex and internecine case, Brian was accused by former Attorney General Elliot Richardson of stealing software from a company called Inslaw. Brian was also an alleged accomplice in the Reagan attempt to undercut President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free Americans kidnapped by Iran. Brian was never indicted on either charge. Herrmann, who was later affiliated with the CIA and FBI, also participated in the aforementioned Iran arms-for-hostages deal, the “October Surprise,” on behalf of Reagan.” (Schreiber)

[17] Kathleen Belew, “Theaters of War: Mercenaries, Paramilitarism, and the Racist Right from Vietnam to Oklahoma City” (Yale University, 2011), 13.

#hopefully this is how my dissertation starts

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collapsedsquid · 6 years

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We are told by the adherents of Modern Monetary Theory that inflation is not a problem. The government just sops up inflation by taxing back some of the money it has created to fund the program expenditures. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like what they say. At the same time, though,at the same time,advocates of a Federal Job Guarantee tout the increased bargaining power that it would give to workers.

Usually that bargaining power is not specified as collective bargaining power. Harry Holzer's comment is the exception. Senator Gillibrand's mention of Job Guarantee and expanding the right to bargain collectively may have just been a smorgasbord of good things and not meant to imply advocacy of collective bargaining specifically for people in the Job Guarantee program. To use a distinction Richard Freeman and James Medoff adopted from Albert O. Hirschman, the "bargaining power" mentioned by Paul, Darity and Hamilton could as easily refer to the "exit" of individual choice as to the "voice" of collective action.

Well, who doesn't want to see workers gain more bargaining power? That is not a rhetorical question. To ask it is to call attention to the very powerful political forces that have seen to it, especially over the last 40 years or so, that they don't. Could it be that the advocates of the Job Guarantee have not done their opposition research? Do they suppose that the regime of supply-side, trickle-down, corporate neo-liberalism was inadvertent?

I am not so certain that the Kochs and the Waltons and Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon are going to shrug their shoulders and say, "O.K., workers, your turn now. Best of luck!" Regardless of whatever MMT says about inflation, the "inflation!" card will be played against any proposed job guarantee election platform, as will the "socialism!" card, the "moochers!" card, the "boondoggle!" card, and, yes, even the "lump-of-labor!" card.

In individual terms, bargaining power comes down to the alternative options if one quits a job -- what is the Best Alternative if There is No Agreement (BATNA). Collectively, bargaining power is determined by strike leverage, which is a mutual perception of the relative capabilities of the two parties to endure a prolonged work stoppage. A Job Guarantee would appear to give additional leverage to unions in the event of a work site closure or the hiring of replacement workers. The amount of leverage depends on what the rules are regarding the eligibility of striking workers for a Job Guarantee. Presumably, workers currently on strike would be ineligible. But what happens if the employer hires scabs (otherwise known as "replacement workers")? What if the company closes down and moves away? Would there be a waiting period before discharged workers become eligible for the Job Guarantee?

And what about the rights of the Job Guarantee workers themselves to collectively bargain and to strike? Until relatively recently public employees were denied the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. Even today those rights are not universally acknowledged:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service... A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.

Who said that? Governor Scott Walker in 2011? Chris Christie? No,Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a 1937 letter to the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. Scott Walker cited FDR in a 2013 speech. Could a Job Guarantee program that denied participants the right to strike become a Trojan horse for rolling back public sector unionism? That is not a rhetorical question.

The conspicuous lacunae in the Job Guarantee literature regarding collective bargaining and the right to strike strikes me as an elephant in the room. The fact that no one talks about it could not conceivably be because no one notices it. For what is at stake here is nothing less than the sovereignty of the State and its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. In an astonishing paragraph in his essay on the "Crtique of Violence," Walter Benjamin makes this not so much "clear" as available for deciphering. Benjamin's provocative claim, distilled from the writings of Georges Sorel and Carl Schmitt, is that "Organized labor is, apart from the state, probably today the only legal subject entitled to exercise violence." Let that sink in... Benjamin goes on to offer qualifications and explanations that address the inevitable objections to that statement. By conceding the political right's standard objection to the labor strike as violent, however, Benjamin -- again following Sorel -- has isolated and emphasized the one circumstance in which it is not -- the revolutionary general strike. This is not to discount the inevitability of retaliatory violence from the State. The insertion of Benjamin's argument into the debate on the Job Guarantee idea may seem esoteric to the casual reader. The reason it doesn't seem esoteric to me is that I have spent the last 20 years studying the history of anti-labor rhetoric of the right and how it gets translated ultimately into seemingly innocuous "policy principles." Public works as an employment stabilizer sounds like a good idea -- what happened to it? Full employment after the war sounds like a good idea -- what happened to it? The reduction of the hours of work sounds like a good idea -- what happened to it? As John Stuart Mill rightly pointed out, "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."

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floralmonkey · 3 years

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The consequences of perceiving language as symmetrical

Nneoma Imo

Dr. Aja Y. Martinez

ENGL 3210 001

December 11, 2020

The consequences of perceiving language as symmetrical

“Meow means woof in cat (“Language Quotes (2294 Quotes),” this is a quote by George Calin; a standup comedian and social critic. Upon reading this quote I could not help but smile, but in all actuality this quote illustrates a reality that is becoming fictionalized; that is the dynamic in other words fluid nature of language. You might wonder; in what ways are we losing this reality? Well, with the imposition of symmetry in language. Symmetry: the relation of all parts in similarity, and the imaginations of it are enticing factors, but symmetry is also deluding. Today’s society seems to crave this notion of symmetry in all aspects of life but in this we fail to understand that we are only deluding ourselves further, distancing ourselves from the asymmetrical nature of truth and language. I begin with an analogy; technology is a beautiful narrative; it portrays symmetry in a fixed light; in how we see ourselves and in how we understand and see others. Imagine you view yourself on your technological device, which is created to cater to society’s narrative disguised as our own, then you take a look in the mirror and notice the slight difference: asymmetry. You are baffled, how can this image be you, you wonder. We then hate that image because it is not what we have bred ourselves to see, so when we see that image and compare it to what is usual: what we see every day, the value of truth within it diminishes and we are shocked. Perception becomes a deceptive device when placed alongside a blind search for symmetry. Like with identity, we have definitions that we are used to or ideas within that identity that we hold as solely within that group or categorizing everyone in that group or even just true to the group, at times due to the exaggerated nature of stereotypes. Because of this, when we see someone within that category acting different from what we have been wired to believe, it seems strange and unusual. The image fails to fit the symmetrical perception we have been wired to believe. Perception, how we perceive, what we perceive, and the manner in which we create or understand with that perception affects multiple aspects of how we live and interact with others. Especially, perception affects how we write, read, and speak because it shapes not only our identities, ideologies, and voice but that of others as well. Thus, in this manner how we perceive is also subject to what we know and how much we know and depending on this how we understand others and how others understand us can shift dramatically. It feels contrasting for such an advanced society to still feel as constricting in their nature of perception as the eras which predated it.

Today’s society takes language and does away with the inherent nature of its asymmetry and attempts to make it symmetrical. Language is the basis of writing, speech, and perception as we articulate what we see into words. Because of this language is fluid but due to the limiting nature and value placed on perception language has become constricted. There has been a sort of lackluster attitude towards understanding the complicated nature of language and instead a want to dictate language and to bar it down, and this is delusional not only to the speaker but the one being characterized by that language. When we analyze multiple areas of language, we can find this narrow nature of perceiving and defining, but I want to focus on two key areas which I feel have drastic effects on the above terminology’s perception, language, and symmetry. These are feminism and race, all areas of categorization which are subject to this symmetrical perception of language. I have chosen these key areas because I myself have been bogged down by a limited perception or rather symmetrical perception of them.

First, I will evaluate the notion of feminism and why evaluating it in a symmetrical viewpoint affects language and trickles into how we view writings as well. I remember carrying myself as a feminist, I too wanted to assert myself in this so-called man’s world, I was not going to bend to any man, and neither was I going to lean towards past notions of what characterized women. But as I grew, I took a step away from these believes, I found myself accepting that women and men were inherently different, I accepted notions of submission in marriage in relation to my religion and I became prolife. But as I took these steps, I began to wonder could I still categorize myself as feminist or was I no longer allowed to use that language in relation to myself. Looking at how many categorize feminism and the disregard or even hate on women who felt like me, I thought to myself that to be feminist was to be that definition, so I was not and could not be feminist. In that moment I had failed to understand that feminism as a part of language was a fluid subject to time and individual and, in this manner, I was a feminist just a different definition of feminism.

Feminism is one that has seen its fair share of change throughout the many eras which it existed in. In earlier periods, though not having fully set in as a definitive word, being feminine related to adhering to the social spheres one was allocated. This around these eras was categorized by wearing attires which covered, bearing children, and caring for your home. Feminism later became a movement to involve women in the workforce, to seek rights to vote, it became an image of strength and perseverance. All such images we can see in the format in which feminism was portrayed in art and works of literature, they illustrated their own symmetrical version of feminism. As time goes on and even within the period itself feminism was understood in the construct of popular beliefs, thus taking language as a limited construct. Take Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the image which we have of these women is that of the forbearers of a movement that would exist through time. But most of us either do not know or are perplexed by the image of these women as antiabortionists, especially in the context of what characterizes feminism today (Fiano-Chesser). Susan b Anthony once said, “yes no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed (Fiano-Chesser).” Now I am in no way trying to assert my views over any that differ, this example only goes to show how our limited view of language can distort history and isolate individuals who seek a place under the category in question. This is a similar notion which we now see characterizing our views of others under the label of feminist. The perception towards feminism has of lately shifted away from previous years and has become one which represents equality both on the standards of men and on the level of fluidity of gender. But even though it seems acceptance has become a factor in language, the notion of language is still characterized by an affinity towards symmetry. Feminism in the context of being a stay-at-home mother or accepting notions of being submissive to one’s husband or seeking to separate yourself from the fluid nature of gender has become a subject characterized as non-feminist. I pose the example J.K Rowling’s, a famous writer most notably known for the Harry Potter franchise, of whom accepts the label of feminist but to many, of recent, is not a feminist due to her stance towards gender. The key problem with this lies in the narrow view taken towards defining what makes a feminist and what does not. The isolation of writers, of whom use their voice and gift to articulate the very nature in which language is fluid, has a drastic effect on how language is furthered. This notion of viewing one key definition as having more influence than other definitions makes language monotonous and affects how we understand or approach individuals who seem to differ from our usual perspective but are only markers of the asymmetrical nature of language.

The nature of this problem can be associated with the way society categorizes power, in which power comes with existing within societal standards. “But also, out of a need to belong to and be approved by the power structure, they immerse themselves in currently fashionable critical theories, read authors that are chic (Hairston),” stated by Maxine Hairston, a key voice in composition studies, in her essay Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing. Here she evaluates the nature in which this narrowed view towards language and understanding trickles into the classroom, specifically freshman classrooms. In this case the teacher imposes their singular, symmetrical ideas; those of which have gained rise in the political and social sphere, on the student. As such the student perpetuates and exhibits the ideas received as dictating right. Hairston’s evaluation mirrors the consequences that come with retaining a narrowed perception of language because of its nature within forming our beliefs. It is easy to isolate ourselves and others when we see language from a symmetrical perspective around a common notion of the period, it distorts our understanding of works of literature in the category or isolates others from being under that category. It as well affects our approach towards others and limits discussions. Feminism in language differs from culture to culture, era to era, individual to individual, we should embrace this level of fluidity rather than seeking a view that articulates our beliefs, a symmetrical view towards language.

I recall reading a portion of a work: Bootstraps from an American academic of color written by an author: Victor Villanueva, once in which the author evaluated this similar nature of language becoming a tool for constriction, a tool in which interpretation of the individual became subject to the knowledge of others on certain characteristics. In reading this work four words stood out to me, “he knows Mexican less (Villanueva),” these four words in the context of a Latin man asked to write on the literature of his culture proved appealing. Villanueva in these words illustrated an individual not characterized but subject to race. In a similar manner in which categories like feminism can become limited and subject to a popular standard of interpretation, race as well, if not more so becomes subject to this. Race is an element of myself that in the face of others takes preeminence over my individual self. My identity is subject to the knowledge of others about my race. I remember being asked if I had originating roots in America rather than Africa because I was of fairer skin, I remember being told that my voice and speech did not fit my race and even limiting myself to the stereotypes of my race. Race has stepped away from being part of an individual to being the individual. In a limited standpoint and a symmetrical perspective on language, race is viewed on the basis of societal perceptions known as stereotypes. There is a relatively new movement that gained light around the 1980s known as new racism, this concept evaluates racism on the basis of stereotypes which limit the mobility of the individuals subject to it, whether this mobility is in work, society, or creativity (“The Limitations of Race: ‘New Racism’ and the Contemporary Construction of African-Americans in Cinema.”). There has been this loss towards understanding the complex nature of race; being that race can be delineated further into ethnicities or even that race or its subcategory ethnicity can be understood as having fluid areas in culture. And even deeper, race is subject to the individual and this individual can exhibit actions which deter from the notions surrounding their race.

The shift towards examining race as a personality has excluded “ethnic and national diversity that various racial groups encompass (“Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. | Boundless Sociology).” In the context of the black race, speech, writing, action is all understood on the basis of race. Just to name an example, coming across checkboxes; whether this is for voting or school or for a job, one can see that there is some care given in terms of the understanding of other races but in the context of the black race the typical labels are African American or black American. There is little care given to evaluate the deeper nature of the language of race. When the world is so closed off on perceiving language outside the labels they are used to, it leaves us with the typical conclusion of all Asians are Chinese, Latinos: Mexicans, Native American: Indian, and black: ethnicity. Language is thus limited to our focal point in the hopes of shying away from any sense of irregularity towards the definitions we have accepted. Using this notion of symmetrical language goes even deeper when it becomes a part of how we write and categorize writings. Writings which are better understood on the level of the ethnicity become subject to a racial evaluation, writings written by authors of another country in English are questioned on the notion of their origination. Writers who seek to be evaluated in relation to other races are constricted to their race and the limited understanding of it. Writers who seek to evaluate or write on ideas differing from the characterization of their race are seen as being not of the race. In this manner the fluid nature of language is lost or withheld. If there was an understanding towards the idea that language is asymmetrical and thus subject to change and outliers, then seeing, hearing, and reading works of individuals would not be influenced by our clear ignorance but our willingness to learn.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, an American British philosopher quoted “The limits of my language means the limits of my world (“Language Quotes (2294 Quotes).” We are too globalized of a society to still retain or entertain a limited structure of language. Because perception and language affect one another this limited viewpoint affects not only societal interaction but the understanding and creation of literature and of history. As all of these are evaluated on the perspective of the dominant characteristics of the period, it is easier to constrict them. In this context, we fail to understand levels of difference associated with certain categories, question the place of individuals under these categories, and limit our worldview of elements like race. Jones Royster, a prominent voice in the area of literature and communication, evaluated this notion in her essay When the First Voice You Hear is not Your Own, where she states that interpretations subject to a power scale “tend to have considerable consequence in the lives of the target-ed group, people in this case whose own voices and perspectives remain still largely under considered (Royster).” Why are we walking backwards instead of forward in relation to language, limiting voices of individuals who exist within these categories? How do we escape this narrative that we have fostered? How do we detach language from the chain of symmetry to which we have bound it to? How do we cater perception to the fluidity of language? We begin by putting down our phones and taking a long look in the mirror.

link to speech : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6D9deVL_a8

Works Cited

Fiano-Chesser, Cassy. “Yes, You Can Be a Feminist and Be pro-Life.” Live Action News, 23 Jan. 2016, www.liveaction.org/news/yes-can-feminist-pro-life/.

Hairston, Maxine. “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 43, no. 2, May 1992, p. 179, 10.2307/357563.

“Language Quotes (2294 Quotes).” Goodreads.com, 2009, www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/language.

“Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. | Boundless Sociology.” Lumenlearning.com, 2010, courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-u-s/.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 47, no. 1, Feb. 1996, 10.2307/358272.

“The Limitations of Race: ‘New Racism’ and the Contemporary Construction of African-Americans in Cinema.” Cinematic Constructions of Race, 28 Mar. 2012, undersocialconstruction.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/the-limitations-of-race-new-racism-and-the-contemporary-construction-of-african-americans-in-cinema/.

Villanueva, Victor. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. Urbana, Illinois, National Council Of Teachers Of English, 1993.

#voice #identity #ideology #language #symmetry #perception

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