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sepublic · 5 months

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The Immigrant and the Colonizer

There’s something fascinating to me about the juxtaposition of Luz as the immigrant, and Belos as the colonizer; The whole interplay of the outsider coming into a different world. The Wittebanes and Nocedas both came to Gravesfield, but the Wittebanes have the historical context of being part of a larger colonial movement that sought to exploit the Americas; By contrast, the Nocedas are of Dominican heritage, meaning somewhere along the way, they immigrated to the U.S.

So you have Philip participating in this colonization in order to be on the better end of the power dynamic, making the outsider status into one of oppression and dominance, and this naturally translates to how he interacts with the Boiling Isles and bastardized everything about it for his own ends. Conversely, you have the Nocedas, who given their backgrounds, are inevitably submitting themselves to the power structures that Philip was a part of and represents.

Which means with the Nocedas, it’s the outsiders who are the ‘mercy’ of the world they’ve traveled to, and they’re the ones who are pressured into assimilating into it, being measured by Gravesfield’s standards of what a proper citizen should be, etc. Camila hides parts of herself deemed 'undesirable' and even ironed her hair flat. If the Wittebanes came to dominate, the Nocedas were made to submit.

And this just ties into Luz maintaining her own identity and still holding onto that, as do Manny and Camila. The Nocedas ultimately understand that they can’t lose themselves to be a part of something, and I find that ties in nicely with the whole interplay of wanting to be your own person, but also wanting to participate, and balancing these two things; Otherwise you end up like Eda, who for a while was a lonely outcast, or Lilith, who conformed but at the cost of so much.

What’s also interesting is that Luz is afro-latina; Meaning she’s the descendant of those brought over as part of the colonization effort, whether they wanted to participate or not, and the natives indigenous to the Americas. So there’s Luz once again navigating two worlds as the immigrant and the native.

So amidst the Nocedas learning to maintain their identities in a foreign world, we also have Luz learning to engage with another one in the Boiling Isles, and this is where she differentiates from Philip; She does not become entitled to this world. She recognizes by the second episode that this world and its people do not exist to cater to her whims and fantasies; If she wants to really participate, Luz needs to put in the effort to actually engage with the Boiling Isles. And with Adventures in the Elements, Luz understands that it’s not just about engaging with the isles, but engaging with it on its own terms; She realizes she can find the glyphs in nature after learning to commune with it, in the form of the Titan. And nature will respond to Luz if she shows respect.

There’s a lot to be said about how Luz worries over whether she’ll be a ‘real witch’, and how this can parallel how immigrants in general can feel like outsiders who don’t really belong, who don’t actually partake in this local identity; There’s a parallel to real life about a white Puritan immigrating to another land, only to colonize and make it hostile to a future Latina immigrant, all while his own double standard is left unacknowledged by his government (“Go back to your world” as said by Lilith during her time in the Emperor’s Coven). But in the end, Luz manages to figure out witchhood on her own terms, while co-existing healthily with the Titan and the people around her.

And it’s not as if this quality of respecting the land and its people is inherent/unique to people of indigenous heritage, either; We have Caleb Wittebane, a white man who initially was a part of the colonization of the Americas. But as Caleb’s story proves, he is not doomed by ‘race’ or ‘genetics’, he can choose to learn and respect different worlds and people, unlike Philip, whose ravings on humanity needing to be saved from witches and demons boils down to bioessentialism. Caleb falls in love with Evelyn, he unlearns what he was taught, and he even becomes a part of this other culture by having a mixed child, from whom Eda and Lilith are descended from.

The Clawthornes are unambiguously witches and people of the isles, despite their human ancestry; Mixed race people are often accused of not really belonging to either race, which again connects to Luz and how she worries about being a real witch and not belonging in the Demon Realm, even as she struggles to fit into the human world, and of course her Afro-Latina identity. Because in the end, yes; These ‘outsiders’ CAN and should engage with other cultures, and even become a part of them.

In discussing colonization and appropriation, a lot of well-meaning people have fallen into the trap of acting as if there’s some inherently, morally wrong about white people, and just outsiders in general, engaging with a culture different from theirs; And this is just segregationist rhetoric, but reworded to sound progressive. Because discouraging people from connecting to and learning to understand those unlike them is actually a bad thing that contributes to prejudice. And that’s the importance of Luz and Caleb, with Caleb especially proving that white people have no excuse NOT to be respectful; In death, his pose mirrors that of the Titan’s, signifying him as someone who understood the spirit of the world.

Fascism and racism in general relies on the premise of Us VS Them; But with how Belos is the colonizer, it’d be easy to fall into the trap of saying that humanity and witches should be separate, period. But that just risks casting humanity, or even just white people, as separate and inherently different (and thus excuses a supposed inability to connect with Us). And yet you have Luz, who is also a human outsider like Belos, and while Belos causes no shortage of problems, Luz herself is a solution who changes so many people’s lives for the better; Outsiders have a lot to offer, actually!

And that just goes back to the key distinction between the immigrant and the colonizer, the one who imposes, and the one who assimilates. There’s the blurring of the distinction that is categories, and the questioning of the binary, as Luz CAN still maintain a connection to her human heritage and home, while becoming a part of the Boiling Isles. She doesn’t have to abandon one for the other.

Likewise, we don’t know much about Caleb’s process in acclimating to the isles, but it’s worth noting how he abdicates the power dynamic of the colonizer to become a part of something else. Maybe this is assimilation, but maybe it’s not, because Caleb is doing this on his own terms. And given his joyous reaction to Philip, and assumption that he was here on good terms? I think Caleb would’ve gladly maintained ties to his human heritage, if the humans he knew weren’t explicitly rejecting co-existence and making it impossible for him to do that.

But as Caleb himself, and finally the Nocedas prove, it’s not actually necessary to maintain this segregation just to maintain one’s own identity (Caleb doesn’t hide his ears). Even Caleb’s descendants in Eda and Lilith understand it; You can be a part of something and still be your own person. Luz can still make new connections and become part of a new world without having to renounce her heritage. These things aren’t inherently contradicting one another, it’s only the belief that they do. But you can choose to make things work and adapt, just as Caleb and especially Luz did.

Yeah, an outsider spelled doom for the isles, but an outsider was also the one who saved them. By principle, the isles should still be open to others, hence Gus facilitating contact with his exchange program. Gus is deeply fascinated by human culture, he gets to visit its world, but he also misses his dad and home and gets to go back to that two, and now he gets to make them both meet; So the reverse to this human outsider to a demonic world also applies here.

We have Gus, but also Luz’s other friends, who adapt to the human world; Eda also applies, as someone unaware that she is technically REconnecting with her human heritage when pursuing her trash collection. And of course we have Vee, who becomes a member of the Noceda family we've been talking about, as someone also an immigrant who had to blend in to survive, and suffering the consequences of xenophobia.

There’s also the Archivists and the Collector; The Archivists came in to control another world, converting it into scrolls under their possession, under the claim of preserving and protecting things. And part of their plan relied on using the Collector as an unwitting Trojan Horse to lower the guard of the native Titans. You have the Collector genuinely loving the Titans and forming bonds with them, only to be made complicit in invasion; And when the Titan retaliated, basically under the assumption that all outsiders like the Collector were evil, it led to more tragedy. And the Collector, for all their love of Titans, still had to learn to respect them and their agency, as well as everyone else’s in the Boiling Isles.

Sure, there’s a potential risk to letting others in, both on a personal level, and on a larger one like how the Boiling Isles –particularly the Titan herself- let in others, such as the Archivists, and later Philip Wittebane. I wonder if her regret over mistreating the Collector led to her giving Caleb, and then Philip, another chance; But even when Philip backfired, the Titan still kept enough of an open mind to let in Luz afterwards, showing a sincere repentance for how the Collector was treated. They’re clearly capable and willing to learn, it’s not inherent to their species to dominate, any more than it is for white people like Caleb or Hunter.

And that takes us back to Gus; It’s like how he realizes with Hunter’s help that even if people will take advantage of your kindness and hurt you, in the long run, that welcoming acceptance is better for the world. You’re obviously entitled to resistance and self-defense if repeatedly exploited and hurt, but that doesn’t mean you’ll always have to. Colonization/assimilation IS a thing but it’s not the inevitable result of cross-cultural interaction, you can and should let different things coexist.

#the owl house #luz noceda #caleb wittebane #gus porter #augustus porter #boiling isles titan #emperor belos #philip wittebane #meta #analysis #themes

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imnosuperman12 · 3 months

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Words that cut.

I don't think I could ever say this out loud to them. And truthfully, maybe I am too sensitive. But as much as I love my siblings, they have said things in the last few months that have rubbed me the wrong way. So here I am to vent.

My brother has historically had a pattern of taking my accomplishments and minimizing them. And I don't know if he has the self awareness to realize that he does this. But it's almost like a knee jerk reaction at this point, and I just have unfortunately learned to expect it. It started out with pretty innocuous things. Like when I started out with Crossfit, I would share my new PRs for certain lifts, and time after time he would reply back with what his PR for that same lift was (surprise, they were almost always more). On some level, I think he did this to relate to me, but how it came off and was delivered felt pretty much like he was trying to one up me, at every opportunity. Discrediting the time and effort put in to even getting that far. A simple 'congrats', would have sufficed.

Other examples have been various graduation and white coat ceremonies. Most of the time, he would be referencing someone else, pretty much saying that he didn't really understand the point of graduations. It's like 'doing the bare minimum. Like they should do ceremonies for board exam results instead'. Or for white coats: 'they give white coats out for everything now huh? Like it's just a lab coat that's just over glorified'.

Most recently, when I moved into my new apartment, I was on a FaceTime call with him and Anvy, and I was going on and on about how excited I was that I had my own place. The context being that last year, I had to split rent with someone in Seattle because I just couldn't afford it. And LITERALLY the first comments out of his mouth were how small my place, particularly my TV, were. 'Simple Dan', he said, somehow saying he admired my 'humility' and how I could live so simply and how he could never do that. Truthfully, it was condescending and not appreciated.

Any time I go on a trip abroad, though, it's always a slew of unnecessary comments that "I should be saving money".

Like which is it. Am I too stingy? Am I spending too much? It's always a lose lose, and it can be tiring at times to hear that not just from my parents, but from him too? Yeah no, you don't get to have that power over me anymore.

And as far as my sister goes, I always kind of just assumed we were on the same page. We get along pretty well when we're together. We both lived in El Paso and went to the same school. We know a lot of the same people. We have very similar careers. I always just thought she got me.

But come to find we were at my cousin's wedding last November, and me and my cousins were just hanging at the dinner table late one night talking about all kinds of things. Ariel brought up that she always admired the Millar siblings, that we always seemed so close. That it seemed like we would be friends, even if we weren't siblings (in complete contrast to her relationship with her brothers growing up). And I was the first to respond, oh yeah totally! I could totally see that.

My sister: absolute. radio. silence. Just a side eye, with no comments had. And then when pried about it? She had the audacity to say no in front of everybody. It was the first time I like rethought about our relationship, and was like, were we actually not that close this whole time? Like am I completely delusional? And isn't that like, really rude? At least LIE for my sake. So embarrassing.

I don't really question whether or not they love me or have love for me. That goes without saying. Family is family. Of course I love them. But with both of them, I always bragged to other people that I felt like I was lucky growing up and that we actually liked either other.

Maybe I'm just the one that looks at everything through rose-colored glasses. Admittedly, that might be giving me too much credit too. Not sure if this is me gaslighting myself, overthinking things, or being too sensitive. But here we are.

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hagoftheholler · 2 years

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Another chapter of adhd thoughts for y'all. This is something that's been on my mind for a few days now, and I decided that I wanted to talk about it a little on here. A few days ago I had a conversation with a few people and one of those people, to say the least, had no idea what he was talking about. He was incredibly defensive about the topic; refusing to listen to those of us who were trying to explain how what he was saying was inaccurate at best and insulting to some at worst. I won't get deep into what happened because that's not the point of this point.

The point of this post is me saying that, in context of magic/spirituality/religion, you are going to get things wrong sometimes and that's okay. How you react to being informed that you got something historically/culturally/religiously/magically wrong is what matters.

Coming from a person with adhd + the adhd rejection sensitivity (am actively recovering, though it's been a difficult journey), it's a hard truth to accept sometimes. I'm not going to sit here and preach this without acknowledging that I myself have gotten things wrong before and defended myself into a hole too deep. Like any other person, I've been wrong before and since those times I've put effort into learning about the things I was wrong about.

I feel like these days, with how the internet gives us access to endless resources to learn from (both good resources and bad resources), there is a sort of (un)spoken expectation for everybody to know everything. It's true that people should be doing their own research and seeking resources to help them with that research. However, we also can't expect people to know everything.

Having a default expectation for everybody in this community to know everything can become toxic really quick. We see it all the time with people dogpiling on beginners who are just trying to figure things out. The whole condescending "oh, well you're a beginner so you shouldn't be looking into this yet" type thing. I have to say, I've grown to really fucking hate this type of attitude. I myself had this attitude once when I was surrounded by others who had a similar opinion on things, and since separating from them I've realized how absolutely ridiculous it is. There is a difference between explaining why something can be problematic or dangerous and brushing people off by telling them that they're not "advanced" enough to be researching these things.

As a community, we all need to accept that these things shouldn't be a matter of "well, you've only been dabbling with magic for this long so you shouldn't even consider looking into this yet" but rather "okay, if you're interested in this I suggest reading abc and watch this video from xyz before getting started". All of our paths are different and those of us who have been practitioners for a longer period of time shouldn't be dictating in what order people research and practice things. We all start in different places and we further grow in different directions.

As individuals, however, we all need to accept that we will get things wrong sometimes. We will make mistakes and that is okay, as long as you seek to understand what was wrong and do better.

If you are told that something you said was misinformation or insulting to a group of people, don't jump to defend what you said. Take a step back and ask for clarification, educational sources or to be directed to somebody from that group of people to learn more from them. If your first reaction is to defend the misinformation or insulting statement, you're already going in the wrong direction.

#witchcraft #witchblr #witch community

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tanadrin · 3 years

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Dev Patel and the Green Knight

I finally got around to seeing The Green Knight. Overall, I enjoyed it--David Lowery does a good job capturing the essential weirdness of the tale, which is very much about taking a mundane circumstance (a Christmas feast) and suddenly catapulting the reader into a mythic otherworld through the intrusion of the alien and monstrous, and the fantastical costumes, dramatic lighting, and dissonant score all contribute very well to a sense of otherness that permeates the original story.

But I find it interesting--and, I'll admit, a little frustrating--that no modern film adaptation of medieval literature is really capable of taking the story it's adapting on its own merits. This isn't an objection to modifying the source text, or taking it in new, non-literal direction. I can think of plenty of adaptations of work that play with the source material in interesting ways, and are better for it. Even very faithful adaptations like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings are inevitably going to alter the source based on the need to adapt it for the screen and the whims of the director. But when it comes to medieval classics, texts like Beowulf or Gawain and the Green Knight are always held at arm's length. An ironic layer is always interpolated into the original story, and even in modified form the story is never allowed to stand on its own.

Contrast, for instance, modern retellings of Arthurian legend; or Wagner's Nibelungenleid; or something like Neil Gaiman's book of Norse mythology. These are all adaptations of much older stories, all medieval; and the authors typically happy to let the stories operate on their own terms. In fact, that is often a selling point: dipping into these tales is a way of sampling an alien culture, one that is remote from us in time rather than space, and part of the sense of heightened drama is the understanding that these stories do not necessarily depict the world in the same way that modern realist prose does. They are fairy-stories, in the Tolkienian sense, and something not quite even like "high fantasy," which, although it is a genre which owes much to the mythic tradition, is usually *told* in the same manner as other realist fiction. And you could take these stories and re-cast them in a realist mold--that's definitely been done with Arthurian legend, either via anachronism or trying to place them in an era-appropriate historical context, and even that yields something quite like the original in tenor, even if the language used to relate the story is often very different.

Watching this movie, I was *strongly* reminded of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf, in that this did not feel like an attempt to adapt Gawain and the Green Knight for the screen. It felt like an attempt to tell a story *about* Gawain and the Green Knight (the text), a story which does not stand on its own. You don't have to have read the text to understand the movie (although I think some directorial decisions would be a bit mystifying if you hadn't), but the movie definitely situates itself *as a response* to the text. Which is an odd choice! Actually, another good point of comparison is Spike Jonze's Adaptation. It started life as an adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, but Charlie Kaufman sort of gave up writing that halfway through and wrote a movie about the difficulty he was having writing *that* movie, and the result is something very weird (and very good) that is full of metafictional elements that depend on the existence of this other work, in a way that a straight retelling of The Orchid Thief for the screen obviously would not. And while The Green Knight isn't that extreme, it is definitely playing on the structure of the medieval poem, and replying to it.

The core of the movie (as I understood it) is a tension between young Gawain's aspiration to knightliness, his ambition which is born at least in part from his mother's encouragement, and his own failure to live up to the heroic ideal of greatness. Not chivalric--this is a movie in which the ethos of chivalry makes not even the briefest of appearance, which is weird given that it's nominally an Arthurian romance, and that the chivalric ethos is extremely important to the original text. Instead we have a generic greatness being described, one which is associated with renown, with taking part in mythic events, and with achieving high rank and honor. In the service of seeing her son obtain all this, Gawain's mother seems to cast some kind of spell, whereupon the titular Green Knight appears at Arthur's Christmas-feast; and as in the poem, a game of beheadings is proffered. Gawain accepts the challenge, beheads the knight, and the knight rides away, promising he'll meet Gawain a year and a day hence at the Green Chapel. So far so straightforward. When Gawain sets off a year later to meet the knight, his mother gives him an enchanted belt to keep him safe from harm. Gawain goes on to have a couple of side-of-the-road adventures and mishaps, the kind of thing that's par for the course when you're telling an Arthurian romance, until he arrives at the house of a mysterious benefactor, just about a day away from the Chapel, who grants him hospitality until the day of his challenge.

Now, in the original story, this is where Gawain gets the magic belt, and it's hugely important: Gawain and his host promise to exchange anything they might receive at the end of each day, when the host has been out hunting all day and Gawain has been in the house recuperating from his travels. During this time, the host's wife repeatedly tries to seduce Gawain; and Gawain is trapped between the imperative not to sleep with his host's wife (a major violation of the rules of good chivalric conduct!) and the imperative not to offend the woman (also a violation of those rules). He succeeds, for the most part; he is forced at one point to give his host a kiss at the end of the day, since the wife kissed him; this is shown as him holding nothing back and acting in good faith on the vow he made to his host. When Gawain finally rebuffs the wife for good, she insists that, even if he won't sleep with her, he should at least take a magic belt she has woven that will keep him from harm. He does; but he does *not* give this to his host. When he finally goes to the Green Chapel, the Knight returns the original blow as promised--but only nicks Gawain lightly. He reveals himself to be none other than the host who was sheltering him; the nick was his reprimand for withholding that final gift, but because of his good conduct he is otherwise left unharmed. The whole thing was a test of sorts, one which Gawain passed. Despite flinching at first from the blow, and keeping the belt secret, he shows himself ultimately to be a man of good (albeit not perfect) conduct, and *that* is why he wins honor from the whole affair.

The movie takes this basic narrative and alters it in key places, completely changing the valence of the whole thing. First, Gawain gets the belt at the beginning of his quest, as mentioned; he loses it on the way, but when he reaches the castle, the wife of his host (who succeeds in seducing him with a handjob) presents it to him as if she had woven it herself. He does not actually engage in the game of exchanged with his host, who is *also* not the Green Knight. And we're treated to a monologue about the color green from the wife that feels beat for beat like it's been ripped off from someone's undergraduate essay about Gawain and the Green Knight, which is a little weird even in the context of the rest of the movie. Finally when Gawain reaches the chapel, the knight goes to return the blow--and Gawain completely chickens out and flees. We are then treated to an extended sequence of Gawain returning home; being feted as a hero; earning his knighthood (presumably by lying about what happened); succeeding Arthur as king; him abandoning his low-class beau once she bears him a son, and marrying a princess; going to war; his son dying in a war; and finally, as an old man, being trapped in his throne room as a besieging army breaks its way inside. Just before they do, he removes the magic belt from around his waist, his head fall off, and bam--we're shown this has been an Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge thing this whole time, and the Green Knight has not yet landed his blow.

Gawain finally takes off the belt, throws it aside, and tells the knight to go ahead--and the knight bends down and congratulates him. In context, the reading seems to be this: the belt is a talisman of Gawain's mother's influence, of external expectations for what kind of man he is. The Knight is Arthur or perhaps an agent of his, and the test in *this* case is whether Gawain can be his own person. All the events leading up to this point are perhaps a part of the original magic Gawain's mother cast, an effort to Lilith Weatherwax her kid to greatness by putting him into an epic story. Implicitly, then, the Gawain and the Green Knight we all know is the false version of the tale, the tale as Gawain's mother would have it told.

This is all very clever. But I'm afraid it's so clever it falls apart in the end. Because the structure of the original story that this depends on is dependent in turn on taking the whole notion of chivalric virtue seriously, which this movie plainly does not. Gawain is shown as irreverent and lustful and a bit of a party animal--lovable and good hearted fundamentally, but definitely not an Arthurian hero. That's fine, but that's a very modern sort of character, one that feels out of place in a movie that is trying very hard also to be tonally unmodern, firmly embedded in a mythic otherwhen of Arthurian legend. Moments of slice-of-life mundaneness, while charming, strain mightily against the epic tone the movie tries to take in other places, and strange events like a ghost seeking her lost head or immense giants striding the landscape. We are jostled: are we in the land of myth? Or are we in historical Britain? We cannot be in both!

And this is a movie that was definitely made by people who had read the original text; not just the original text, but also a great deal of criticism *about* the original text. The movie namechecks the theme of fivefold symmetry that's incredibly important to the structure of the poem; there's the aforementioned undergrad essay about colors about 3/4th of the way through; and there's the fact that the structure of the original plot (down to Morgan LeFay in disguise as an old woman in the host's castle) is present in altered form in every detail. But none of these details add up to much. There's a weird homoerotic kiss with the host that implies that in fact *he* wanted to sleep with Gawain, in addition to his wife; the ghost Gawain encounters early on tells him the Green Knight is in fact someone he knows (and therefore *can't* be the host; I think it's implied to be Arthur, like I said, but this is never quite confirmed), and while all these things *about* the original poem are shown, none of them ever get integrated thematically into the plot.

I think as a result, whatever Lowery was going for, the whole movie kind of falls apart in the end. And that's a pity, because somewhere in there is just a really weird, visually striking, really gripping, embellished-and-polished-for-modern-sensibilities-but-also-thematically-true-to-the-source retelling of Gawain and the Green Knight. And that would have been a much better movie! What are we to make of this, a movie that purports to be telling a story-behind-the-story, but one that leaves no room or context for the original? After all, Gawain in the end does *not* flee, does not return home a coward and a liar; presumably, he earns his honor, and can be honest about what happened. But if he is honest, none of the rest of what we have been shown makes a lick of sense, or has any point.

One feels a bit as if modern directors, when confronted with medieval texts being a bit weird, a bit alien in their worldview, instead of realizing that's actually something people like some of from time to time, feel like they have to construct an artificial bridge between the Middle Ages and the present day. But because it is invariably metafictional and self-referential, as if to say "don't worry, we know nobody REALLY wants to watch a bunch of boring medieval shit played straight," it comes off as cringing and ashamed of its source material. This isn't a plea for historicity! Gawain and the Green Knight is not history. But one does occasionally want to see an adaptation of one's favorite works without directors being ashamed of the text they are adapting! And since most people will not have read the original, I am rather confused about what the director intends for the audience to get out of all these references that are dependent on it, but don't stand on their own merits within the narrative of the movie itself.

The acting was good, the set design and costumes were terrific, I loved the slow and measured pacing and the weird score, and the design of the Knight himself, and the landscapes and almost everything else about the movie. So I don't think it's a waste of time, especially if you have read and enjoyed Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original or in translation. But it's definitely a pity to see a movie that was, well, *almost* great, but ended up merely OK.

#gotta put that undergraduate degree to work from time to time #we spent a *lot* of time on this poem

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feelingbluepolitics · 3 years

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Republicon "legislators at the state level are codifying into law a draft letter written by a former US Department of Justice official in the remaining weeks of [t]rump's one and only term. That draft letter, according to the Post's Philip Bump, was 'a road map to overthrowing the will of voters.' It explained in granular detail how state Republican officials could have pulled off a coup.

"This quiet coup attempt failed mere days before the loud coup attempt failed. The sacking and looting of the United States Capitol on January 6 was a last-ditch effort by an outgoing president desperate to hold on to power but exhausted of choices. Nullification of the democratic will would have been preferable, because it would not have drawn so much attention. When that failed, [trump] had to risk exposing his true intentions with his last remaining option, a violent revolt.

"The difference between loud and quiet is the proper context for recent remarks by Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney. She said her father, Dick Cheney, was 'deeply troubled' about 'where our party is, deeply troubled about where the country is.' She said this after having voted to impeach [trump] and after losing her job as chair of the House GOP conference. With due respect, though, I doubt she and the former vice president are worried about what they should be worried about. They should be worried about state-level attempts to nullify democracy. I don't think they are. I think, instead, they're worried about potential right-wing violence, like what we saw on January 6. It might draw attention to what state Republican officials are doing.

"Dick Cheney's concern about appearances (assuming I'm correct) might sound quaint given the Republicans are less conservative than they are authoritarian. After all, plenty of Republicans and plenty of their media allies are more than happy to shit-can commitments to democracy and democratic values. Tucker Carlson, the Fox talking head, has been talking up Hungary as a model for the future, one that's transparently hostile to pluralism, political equity and democracy. Why not just come out and say the January 6 insurrection was deserved?

"That respectable [sic] Republicans like Dick and Liz Cheney have not said so suggests they understand the importance of political legitimacy. I think the rest of us should understand its importance, too, especially with respect to fears of an authoritarian future in the United States. Even if you're an all-out fascist, you must maintain the appearance among the people who count to you that fascism is totally legitimate. Right-wing political violence, at least for the time being, is almost never legitimate. Right-wing political violence exposes true intentions.

"This is why many of the Republicans lie about the insurrection. The insurgents were 'victims,' for instance. The demands of legitimacy mean they must convince themselves they're the good guys. That makes them susceptible to the fact that they're not. This is why propagandists like Steve Bannon constantly repeat the myth that the former president's supporters represent the 'true majority.' To be sure, the 'true majority' elected Joe Biden. But whether it's true or not isn't the point. The point is even authoritarians understand the importance of appearances. For now, right-wing violence makes them vulnerable, because right-wing violence exposes their true intentions.

"This seems to me the true fault line within the Republican Party. On one hand are the radicals who don't mind everyone knowing the GOP really does have an informal network of paramilitaries waiting to spring into action. On the other are the leaders and the old guard, who really don't want everyone knowing the GOP has an informal network of paramilitaries waiting to spring into action. They don't mind state election laws that nullify democracy, if that's what it takes to control the government, but they also don't want the radicals mucking up complicated efforts to make authoritarianism nice and legal. To be sure, the GOP has maintained this balance for decades. With [t]rump, however, came a genie who won't be put back in the lamp.

"Meanwhile, the Democrats seem to be moving to force that Republican fault line to its breaking point...The difference is the Democrats have all the evidence of the January 6 insurrection on their side. The Republicans can only say they're 'deeply troubled.' House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn was asked recently by Roll Call for his thoughts on new state 'rules about who gets to overrule election results, legislators and other elected officials.' With all of democracy and democratic values beside him, the South Carolina Congressman said: 'I want you to call it what it is. Use the word: nullification. It is voter nullification. … Georgia just passed a law, it's got nullification in it, saying that these, this committee, will have the authority to overturn elections if–they don't say it this way, but this is what they're saying–if we don't like the results' (italics mine)."

"It remains to be seen whether or not Clyburn's statement has any effect on the current debate in the Senate over election reform. My point for now is about normal partisan politics. While I have no doubt that the Republicans, seeing they came very close to overthrowing the republic once, will try again when the opportunity presents itself. But that's no cause for hopelessness. Authoritarianism is like any other political ideology in that it's vulnerable to normal partisan politics. Indeed, as I've argued, it saved us once. It can and may save us again."

The further point to be made is that there is no more room for centrists and moderates at this historical inflection point, because they put the country at risk from Republicons and authoritarianism. Whatever typical political and social issues may retain democratic debate or consensus as values -- and very few of those remain -- this is not one of them. We must have baseline protections for voting if we prefer a democracy for our future. We must keep pro-authoritarian factions out of power, and that includes the entire Right-wing.

Be partisan. Be very partisan. Be afraid not to be.

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variousqueerthings · 2 years

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tagged by @secondclassfangirl

Rules: Post your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers!

Lol, four out of five of these aren't even Cobra Kai. Thank you though, this really gave me the chance to look at how much I've written (much more than I thought I had)....

For We In Our Youth Did These Things (Kingsman) M

Summary: Eight years after the disappearance of Merlin, Roxy Morton receives a mysterious clue that could lead to the destruction of everything that she once believed in.

This is possibly my least engaged-with fic in comparison to the effort and time I put into it, and I can't say I blame people. It's a lesbian rare-pair, I didn't finish it until long after Kingsman had lost its lustre because of the horrendous sequel, it's a a tinker tailor soldier spy AU, a sequel to a different (quite intense) WWII AU, and it's very bleak and novelly rather than fanficcy. There is nothing I've written that so much encapsulates the "I Write For Me" ethos of fanfiction. I haven't read it back in a couple of years, and I'm sure I could pull out things I'll want to edit on my next read-through, but holy damn! Good Stuff! I did that! My world-building and playing with a relatively twisty-turny plot and creation of the lesbian spy drama that we deserve was fucking incredible (if I do say so myself)!

2. the language of change (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) G

Summary: When Kira - newly-appointed ambassador for Bajoran/Cardassian relations - arrives on Cardassia to see her old friend Garak, she's immediately pulled into another one of his schemes. Not everyone is as convinced of the plan as he is, so now Kira has to try not to yell, punch someone, or accidentally engage too hard in argumentative flirting.

This began a longer endeavour (that I'm not finished with) across a whole series to create a post-DS9 climate that I wish could exist in Alpha Canon, where the end of the Dominion War, the destruction of Cardassia, and Bajoran politics affect the wider story (as they damn well should). I also wanted to create a story about various different DS9 characters and their continued relationships to each other, and finally let Kira be a lesbian! So much of my DS9 HC was born out of creating this fic.

To be honest I could put several fics from this series alone on here, because I love it very, very dearly, but I think this one. It makes me feel so so happy.

3. between the devil and the deep blue sea (Peaky Blinders) E

Summary: Tommy hallucinates that Alfie is Death and almost kills him. Alfie responds by trying to choke him to death. Tommy moans and well, who is Alfie to kill something that moans so prettily, while his hands are around its neck.

This was uh... lockdown gave me so much time and I live with kinky people who enable the fuck out of me. This is my first really graphic fic and it is really fucking graphic. I did not know I had it in me. What I really love about it, was that it felt like I was really beginning to understand what kind of a writer I am with this. The ways everything is to the benefit of character study, including sex, and the way I like to create large, intricate things that reference back to themselves and include a lot of re-read gratification (I think so at least)! It gave me so much freedom to push myself and - if you're into some serious dubcon - I think it's uh... pretty hot... to pat myself on the back.

4. Smalltown Boys (The Outsiders) M

Summary: Johnny and Dally survived, but it turns out living is very different to surviving.

This one is still in-progress, but the chapters work as their own little narratives. I have wanted to write this for awhile, and it's very rewarding. I get to think about queerness in a historical context and pay little pieces of respect to queer writers of the past in various little ways (either through plot structure, modelling characters off of them, or referencing their works in the text). And of course, I get to let these two flipping live! It's also started me on a journey of reimagining texts as queer in ways that for the most part just... nudge them to the left a little, because as anyone who hangs around me for more than 5 seconds knows, I'm obsessed with the ways creators use queercoding tools without knowing it. I just think it's a very beautiful little slice of life, with the realities of queerness affecting how they move through the world.

5. Breathe With Me M

Summary: Daniel discovers that all it takes for Johnny to do as he's told is the right touch

I wanted to include something from Cobra Kai, because obviously that's my main sandbox right now, and I think it's this one, simply because it establishes how far I've gotten in my thinking about Daniel, Johnny, and Amanda so far. It's also what I wrote while I was really getting into the fandom itself, while before that I was still getting to know people. I think cementing an aro-Amanda in my head was such a breakthrough to my view of her, before that I couldn't quite pin her down, but now I get to develop her in lots of different directions (and will do so!) -- as for this Daniel and Johnny... well, everything after this is painted a little bit by this dynamic.

I think? I've seen most everyone get tagged by this? @obstinatecondolementent if you haven't been tagged, @mimsyaf if you're around and feel like it, no pressure ofc!

#cobra kai #peaky blinders #kingsman #deep space nine #thanks again #the outsiders #ds9 #st: ds9 #this was very very lovely for my brain like... holy cow ive written a lot #also that time i impulse wrote a 50.000 loosely princess bride/knight au for kingsman just because????? i HAVE to read that again #like wtf did those 50000 words entail I dontfucking remember at all #but wow I DID that?????

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aro-comics · 3 years

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Fashion Analysis (Part 4: How I Feel Now & More)

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

How I Feel Now (About Fashion)

Er …. I guess it’s complicated. Obviously, I have mixed feelings on the factors that lead to this, as they are symptoms of a deeper problem of discrimination in society. Things are far from perfect, and it’s hard to feel 100% positive about these changes because of it.

But, on the flip side, I don’t personally mind the changes I’ve made to my presentation. It hasn’t been upsetting for me at all, and I’ve only benefited from it in my personal life along with being able to learn and grow through researching fashion.

First, through familiarizing myself with how professional wear works, and later on fashion in general, I was able to unlearn some internalized misogyny instilled in a lot of people my age. Being able to better appreciate women, femininity, and all the things I never got to enjoy growing up is fun. Fashion history has been fascinating to learn about (shoutout to all the video essayists on Youtube), and just getting to research and understand things I once believed were “frivolous” has opened my eyes to a much bigger part of the world. There is so much to gain from understanding different fields and subcultures that exist.

Second, I’ve been able to apply my learning to other aspects of design, and I think understanding more about fashion has helped me understand more about design in general. Not to be cliche, but a lot of things are interconnected, and knowledge from different creative fields can cross pollinate and provide new inspiration! I’ve found my work is becoming more creative and unique, and in particular it’s not only fun to design wardrobes for characters, but it also becomes a way to add to their overall design and communicate more about their interests and personality.

Third, although I disagree with the sentiment that being feminine automatically makes one more confident, through learning more about makeup and self-care, I think I’ve been more conscious about taking care of myself (even if not from an appearance perspective). I’m the kind of person that needs to shower at LEAST once a day to feel comfortable, and overall putting more effort into self-care habits has improved my mental state as well.

Finally, getting to enjoy self expression is another benefit! I think a big part of why I didn’t enjoy fashion as a kid was because of early 2000s trends which were popular when I was young (nothing against them, but a lot of them don’t suit my personal tastes). Since I’ve researched and now understand fashion is so much more than just what is necessarily popular in the mainstream at any given point in time, as an adult I’m having a lot of fun picking out outfits that match my personal tastes. I think it's really cool how by treating your body as a canvas, in a sense, you can be able to communicate a specific vibe, appearance, without even having to say a word. Really, it’s just like any other form of art.

And on the note of self-expression, as we discuss the relevance of fashion to Aromanticism we should examine how Fashion relates to the LGBTQ+ Community.

Fashion and its Importance to the LGBTQ+ Community as a Whole

Fashion has always been significant because of the capacity it grants for self-expression. Historically, this significance has been important within the LGBTQ+ community. As usual, I won’t go into too much detail, because this is not my area of expertise and I doubt that my surface level research would be an accurate or complete picture of this rich and complex piece of history, but - I think a very brief primer will help provide some context and ideas to reference as I move into the more speculative portion of this essay.

We all know that there are certain fashion subcultures within the LGBTQ+ community, which have both historical roots and served specific purposes. Early on (referencing the times circa the 1700s in Europe here), fashion has been a form of self-identification and communication. As source 11 details, gay men, have had historical tie ins with cross-dressing or effeminate methods of dress to signal to other members of the community.

And as I mentioned before: Masculinity is historically associated with being Sapphic. As an example, a recent post from @dressingdykes on Instagram (full article at source 13 at the end of this document) describes how “lesbian feminist clothing was worn with an ideal of androgyny in mind.” Emphasis was put on using fashion to undermine restrictive gender norms used to control women - by choosing to dress in an androgynous way, it would “eliminate differences between men and women, where men hold a socially superior position.

Though no one group or fashion subculture can speak for all members of the group (and the article acknowledges this subculture was far from adopted by all Lesbians), examples like these do highlight the ways an LGBTQ+ identity within a patriarchal and heteronormative society can have influence on the self-expression.

[Note from Author: For Part 5, click here!]

#NotAComic #Fashion #FashionAnalysis

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aotopmha · 3 years

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Attack on Titan in 2020

I've sort of dropped doing detailed chapter posts on the series because that type of writing wasn't very fun for me anymore and I have taken a liking to a bullet point kind of approach where I list the elements that stood out for me in the chapter or make a separate post for some specific topic I'd like to talk about in it.

I've started like 10 different posts to attempt to talk about AoT this year and I always end up with incoherent rambling because of all of the elements I'd love to to talk about.

This year's chapters were 125-135 and this year's episodes episodes 1-4 of season 4.

The anime episodes in particular have given me a lot of food for thought, so I'm just saying fuck it.

I think the biggest misstep of the story for me will forever be the fact that it decided to use fairly specific historical imagery.

The Eldians are clearly supposed to have allegorical equivalency with Jewish people, but the Jewish people were never the oppressors. There weren't any Jewish empires. That's conspiracy theory bullshit.

But on the other hand, the series clearly takes great effort to not stereotype any of the groups it's portraying and gives complex reasons for what both sides do. It's one of the few Japanese series that I've seen not stereotype Middle Eastern-coded people (Ramzi and Halil) or black people (Onyakapon). Everyone are people, it says. It even champions diversity:

(Chapter 118)

It is also very much true that a bunch of fascist states use long-term history as an excuse for their actions:

(Chapter 127)

Nation did X 2000 years ago therefore our conquest of them is justified.

This makes discussion about the series' themes like a minefield.

The people who are very critical about its imagery are right, but the people defending the series aren't wrong, either because it condemns all of those nasty ideas of conquest and hurting innocent people.

You can't have a more clear-cut condemnation of genocide:

(Chapter 127)

If you combine all of these details instead of zoning in on them one by one, to me what the story is saying is that *even if* all of that conspiracy bullshit is true, innocent people don't deserve to be slaughtered no matter the reason because they are still people who have their own feelings, thoughts and wishes.

The story clearly gets the baseline, but fumbles the details. I decided to look up some more discussion surrounding this these past few days and I just wish there was more good faith discussion about it. A lot of it feels like a moral superiority contest.

I think it's these kind of flawed stories that actually deserve detailed scruitiny over stories that are rotten to the core because they are *almost there*. Talking about them is a good topic starter in what to do and not to do in a story like this.

Speaking of rotten to the core, I think the absolute highlight of the chapters this year is Eren and some of the chapters this year finally gave me a pretty clear picture of what is going on with him.

Context from 123 certainly helps, though:

(Chapter 131)

This is about Eren's perspective. He can't accept the destruction of Paradis.

It's not that this solution was inevitable looking in from the outside (which is one of the interpretations I see around for Eren's actions), it's that *Eren* can't see any other way out of this except the most extreme because of all of the horrible things he has seen from the outside world. It is very similar to the way suicidal people can only focus on the negative.

You can tell them everything is going to be okay, but those words won't reach them because their mind won't let them and loops them back to those negative thoughts.

Eren can't see the ice cream or silly clowns. But he can see how the other Eldians in the league of Eldians are willing to push Paradis under the bus. He can see how Grisha's sister was killed. He can see how racist and cruel Marley is towards the Eldians in Liberio (and how the people have racist leanings towards other nations, too).

He can only see those bad things. But he also understands how everyone outside of the walls are human just as the people inside of the walls are.

So he is torn to pieces by guilt.

He doesn't want to do this, but he can't see any other solution.

This is why I also think he can't rob his friends of their agency. He is fighting for them to have a good future:

(Chapter 133)

(Chapter 131)

What really stood out to me on a revisit is that Eren considers himself much worse than Reiner.

I've seen criticism on how the story pushes the narrative of both sides being the same and this detail is really important to me because this is the story acknowledging that what Eren is doing is worse and gives all of the following exchanges about this the context of it being a similarity in principle.

Both sides have killed for what they think is right and have to deal with how they have killed people. This is such an important detail in the Uprising arc, too, where Erwin firmly acknowledged that overthrowing the government might not actually be the right choice by him. It was simply what he saw as right. On a narrative level this avoids absolute truths and preference of one character perspective over the other and once again makes it about individual perspectives.

The theme of individual perspectives is so ingrained in this story at this point in my eyes that it's another cornerstone in understanding what is going on with Eren to me.

I think it's great.

I also really appreciate Annie and what was done with her in this chunk of chapters.

(Chapter 127)

There has been this narrative going around that proposes that the story is in Eren's corner too much. But these chapters are nothing but questioning Eren and Annie is one of the main voices in this. It's the Marleyan girls, really and I think this is a very necessary part of making the narrative work. Once again, it separates the narrative and character perspective.

It says that the Paradis side caring is about character perspective, not what the narrative sides with and Annie is even sympathetic to Mikasa in that instance.

She gets it. Unexpectedly, I think Annie might play a bigger role in taking down Eren than expected. Her character arc about deciding to no longer go with the flow because she doesn't want any more tragedy to happen is basically calling for it.

(Chapter 128)

Another element I've seen brought up is the fact that nobody seems to address the Bert-sized elephant in the room, but some of our characters are certainly thinking about him.

This is such a thematically strong element and really interesting because Connie joined the military to make his mom proud and be a good soldier. This is the motivation behind his claim when he says they are going to save the world. But what does becoming a good soldier mean, exactly?

Well, apparently possibly gunning down people you care about.

This moment is so good because it's another moment where the idea of glory in war is taken down a peg.

The moment with Connie declaring they're going to save the world is so often criticised, but it is actually turned on its head in 128. There is no heroics in this. This is actually Connie's big "killing a person" moment because it strips away the final bit of comfort in killing in war, the excuse of killing for good moral reasons.

It is also a wonderful complex evolution of the series' themes. Trost was about fighting monsters. In the Female Titan and Clash of Titan arcs some of those monsters turned out to be human. In the Uprising, Return to Shiganshina and Marley arcs all of those monsters turned out to be human and here in the War of Paradis arc, everyone is human and the only separating system is what everyone views as right.

I really hope the anime will let this chapter breathe a little bit more.

Moving on, I guess it is time to address the rumbling.

I love it as a horror spectacle.

(Chapter 130)

And I really I think it needs to be non-CG when animated. CG is fine in spectacle battles, but not in horror settings because it is too clean.

The rumbling needs to be disgusting and dirty.

Chapter 132 gave me one of the few moments in which I truly cared about Levi. I think him telling Hange to dedicate her heart was a very good moment to cap off their relationship. He sent another SL commander to fulfill their duty.

The speech about hatred in chapter 134 also stood out to me. I think it definitely should be fitted in there somewhere in this, but I also see a bunch of criticism for it.

I want to point out that this is the side of present Marley talking here. It's the military dictatorship.

It's the Nazis. I think the Nazis should feel regret for exploiting innocent people and admit they're wrong.

I also like how the horrors here are undoing the brainwashing and showing the truth to the citizens.

I guess you could read it as heavy-handed, but it is also something that needs to be addressed and in principle, it's not wrong.

I'm also going to put a mention of Historia here. I've talked about how this is my biggest and most glaring problem with the series because of how thematically unfitting it feels, but I've also talked about it in many posts. I wanted to focus more on other stuff in this post.

So now, we make it back to chapter 135.

I think having stewed on it for a month now, I like the element of mindscrewing our cast with the Titans of the people they love is the strongest element of it. It's making them face their personal traumas and we also get some great character moments and payoffs from it.

Mikasa ended off the year in a very good note in my eyes.

Even this deep in the story, this chapter left me in a situation where I have no idea how things might turn out.

I might have rough ideas, but not anything specific and that's fun.

Well, this is it on my retrospective.

2021 is confirmed to be AoT's final year of publication as volume 34 is set to be the story's final volume.

Those who hate the story can finally be free of it and those who care for it, can look back on it with fondness and sadness and many other emotions and evaluate.

It's been 7 years for me. What a wild ride.

So, I'm asking everyone, what are some of your observations on AoT in 2020?

Is there anything you'd like to add or do you have any observations or counterarguments for anything I've said?

I'd be curious to see what everyone else thought of AoT in 2020!

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #Eren #Eren Jaeger #Eren Yeager #Annie #Annie Leonhardt #Connie #Connie Springer #Hange #Hange Zoe #Historia #Historia Reiss #Mikasa #Mikasa Ackerman

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dodgefred · 3 years

Note

spring awakening for the direction thing please

this is another long one please hit read more

i sort of have two answers for this one because for a while i’ve been thinking about how i’d direct the spring awakening play so i have a bunch of ideas for that but you probably meant the spring awakening musical so i’m gonna do my thoughts for the play in bullet points and then i’ll go more in depth for the musical.

the play:

the time i wanted to seriously do this irl was mid-pandemic and i was losing my mind so a lot of my blocking ideas were fully socially distanced and every character would wear face masks matching their costumes.

on the note of costumes i really wanted to have the actors able to choose their own costumes. the style would be the nonspecific time period most productions go with w the girls in dresses and the boys in like suspenders or whatever. i think it would give the actors more of a sense of connection to the characters, especially considering how strange the text can be to modern americans.

it would be performed either outdoors in a field or in a blackbox theater. the set would be fairly minimalistic. i would love to find a set motif like the falsettos revival’s foam cube but i haven’t put too much thought into what exactly that motif would be.

i’m not sure how legal this is but i think it would be a fun reference to get soft instrumentals of the musical songs to play behind their corresponding scenes.

any scene where actors would need to be closer than six feet (touching, kissing, etc) would be prefilmed in a silhouette style and projected onto a white sheet. this way actors would only have to be physically close once and not every night. during the show, actors would go behind the sheet for the scene. metaphorically this would also be an indication of the concept that while the children generally aren’t afraid of sex or kissing, they still have the knowledge that it’s an intimate act and still have some sort of inherent shame attached to it.

unrelated to my ideas specifically for this because i just thought of this but on that note i also think it would be really interesting for a production where the actors act behind a white sheet and all the audience sees is silhouettes. i think it would be a really cool way to play with shapes like that, and a bit of an extra challenge for the actors to try and be emotive and expressive when no one can see their expressions. it would also add to the idea of the children in the show not being understood despite their best efforts.

now in terms of the musical, i’m jumping around a lot for this one because with spring awakening i’ve seen it so many times and everyone’s done it a million different ways and so i don’t have exact ideas for the show scene-by-scene like i did with alice by heart. i do have an overall concept i’d like to follow, as well as a few specific scenes that i’d like to address. this is also going to focus more on my mindset while directing rather than the blocking and concepts itself, because spring awakening is much more clear with its stage directions than alice by heart is.

i know this is cheesy af but hear me out: a les mis dallas-style modernized production would hit so different. i’ve seen a lot of spring awakening productions and a lot of them try modernizing it but the directors don’t understand that putting a modern outfit on a period piece isn’t going to change much in the grand scheme of things. however i do think a lot of the problems in spring awakening can and should be addressed under a modern lens- these are real issues that still plague today’s youth, albeit maybe less dramatic than death by botched abortion.

this is also why for the song of purple summer, i’d make this connection between past and present much more clear by making the final costumes historically accurate (or at least historically accurate to the extent that most productions go for) in a similar color palette to their everyday wear. this is kind of an inversion of what spring awakening tried to do when it was off-broadway / in previews on broadway, but hopefully less……bad?

i think in order to be effective, some spring awakening scenes need to be done a certain way and most productions don’t do them correctly.

the first of which is the beating scene. in most productions, wendla and melchior enjoy it too much. i think this needs to be the exact opposite. wendla is a young girl with no concept of bodily harm and this leads her into some much less than ideal situations throughout the show. in this scene, we need to see wendla’s regret as soon as the beating starts, and yet her stubbornness and naïveté prevails. for melchior, we have a young boy who doesn’t know what he’s doing, either. in the play, we find out one of melchior’s worst nightmares was a dream where he started punching his dog and couldn’t stop. while the musical doesn’t include this but it context, i still need to see that bit of backstory in a melchior. contrary to wendla, melchior’s regret begins to kick in more at the end. in this scene, their emotions directly foil each other. we need to actually be able to see that.

also while i adore otto and georg and their woyb reprise, i really don’t understand why it belongs to them and i think just the instrumentals itself should be a taunting reprise, or wendla can quietly sing it to herself as the scene fades to black.

the next vital scene is the hayloft scene. quick trigger warning here for discussions of rape here so feel free to skip to the next chunk of text if you don’t want to read that sort of thing! i also want to apologize if i misstep in my description of this scene in any way, and if i actually directed this, i’d like to talk to some survivors to see what would actually be an appropriate way to perform this scene in a nonromantic way. these are just my immediate thoughts with the scene presented.

in the text of the musical, the hayloft scene is heavily romanticized, but i still think with the right direction, it can be played as how it is in the play. in the play, it’s more clearly rape, and even though in the musical wendla says yes, i would like to emphasize the fact that wendla doesn’t know what she’s saying yes to. a very important point of emphasis of this should be the climax of i believe. as the rest of the ensemble comes to their final harmony, we should cut to a blackout and hear wendla scream in pain overtop of the music.

the vineyard scene needs to be performed much more tenderly and sensitively than written. i would ideally like to work with queer actors for this scene and ideally have hanschen and ernst’s connection be much more genuine.

i think it would also be neat if there was a big set piece that looked like a tree branch and this scene can take place sitting on top of it.

overall my ideas for spring awakening are a lot less cohesive than for alice by heart because i’ve been thinking about this for a longer time and therefore everything is all over the place and i have concepts in my head for literally three different productions of it i guess, but i think it would be so much fun to work on no matter which way i do it!

#spring awakening #answered #anon #sorry this is a lot less cohesive than the other one #and sorry this took a long time to respond to it took a lot of time to get my thoughts out #i just think it would b neat to direct spring awakening

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fyexo · 3 years

Text

201216 M-Pop star Lay Zhang tells us about his music, dreams, and starting his own company

Chinese Megastar Lay Zhang wants to bring ‘China to the world’ with his music. He talks to Don’t Bore Us about how he plans to achieve his dreams.

For most of us, our dreams are conditional. For us, they remain in the abstract most of the time, attached to phrases like ‘It would be good if…’ or ‘I wish I…’. Not for Lay Zhang. Lay Zhang speaks in dreams. In his mind, he picks them out of the abstract and parks them on the road to his goals. Then, he sets into motion a cause and effect cycle, where each step leads to the realization of that dream.

“The word dream is a strange one,” he wrote in his autobiography Standing Firm at 24. “You start with a dream, but you have to fulfill everything in reality. Of course, it’s not really that you’re dreaming, because someone once told me, a dream is actually what a person’s heart looks like.”

Despite his status as one of China’s most famous stars, it’s this spirit that still is the condensation of Zhang’s ethos as an artist. Born in Changsha in the Chinese province of Hunan as Zhang Yixing, he was no stranger to the world of entertainment as a child star. In 2008, he auditioned for trainee-ship at SM Entertainment, largely considered the progenitor of modern-day K-pop, and passed. Four years later, he debuted as EXO’s Lay, an act that turned the tide for K-pop in the 2010s.

Home, however, was never very far away — after flitting between South Korea and China for work for sometime, the lengthy schedules eventually made him shift base to mainland China, laying the groundwork for Lay Zhang. His first studio album, Lay 02 Sheep, broke five records on the first day of digital release on the Chinese music service QQ Music. His second, NAMANANA, ranked No. 21 on the Billboard 200 chart, making him the highest-ranking M-pop artist on the chart to date.

It’s an ideal trajectory for anyone with dreams as big as Zhang: every new release came with new records and renown. Eventually, however, Zhang realized what his work was missing: a piece of his roots. He wanted to show the world “what China is really about.”

And so he said: “Let there be LIT.”

Named after a play on the Chinese word for lotus, ‘lián huā’, LIT — released in two parts over the course of 2020 — puts Zhang’s Chinese identity at its core. As he weaves the sounds of the Hulusi, Guzheng and Gong together with hip-hop, R&B, and Latin, Zhang not only creates his own genre (which he calls “mixed Mando-pop”), but also nurtures a new dream: one where Mando-pop frees itself of the labels of being “vapid” and “vain” and presents new avenues of experimentation and cultural triumph.

“In the future, mixed will be king. Every work, every genre can be mixed with each other; every language can mix with another. That’s where we go.” he says.

The way to this “mixed” world might be long, but Zhang will soon have company on the way. Earlier in 2020, he announced the establishing of his own company, Chromosome Entertainment, with a set focus to not only train the next generation of Chinese idols, but also to include Chinese culture and history as an integral part of their artistry.

DBU caught up with Lay Zhang to talk about Chromosome Entertainment, his music, how he is going to take his company to ‘infinity’, and his adorable cats.

Don’t Bore Us: Why did you think this was the right time to start your own company?

Lay Zhang: I have always wanted to have my own company and leave my mark in the world. I feel I need to think less and do more. I wanted to do it no matter how difficult it would be. If I kept waiting for the right moment, I might never do it. So, I created the Chromosome Entertainment Group.

DBU: Is there anything that you’ll focus on teaching the trainees that you yourself didn’t get during your trainee years?

Lay Zhang: Our trainees will learn more and more about Chinese culture and Chinese history.

DBU: Speaking of your music over the past year, we have to talk about LIT. We saw you expand into genres that you had never experimented with before. While Part 1 was a mix of traditional Chinese sounds, Part 2 had more modern inspirations such as R&B, Hip-hop, Latin, and others. Which of these sounds comes more naturally to you, and which one is more difficult to explore?

Lay Zhang: I just tried a lot of genres. Since I was young, I have been singing in Chinese and listening to pop music, so I find writing R&B is easier, since it is similar. With traditional Chinese music, it feels like second nature, since I grew up with it.

Latin and Hip-hop is very new to me, but Latin caught my ear because it’s easy to dance to. I’ve been listening to hip-hop and trap in the past few years. I think no matter what kind, I want to do a new genre. I want to call it M-pop because I think in the future, mixed will be king. Every work, every genre can be mixed with each other — every language can mix with each other, and that’s where we go.

DBU: Speaking of the incorporation of your native Chinese sounds into the songs on the first album, what is the most difficult part while looking for a middle-ground between culture and modernity?

Lay Zhang: You always want to respect the culture. We owe a lot to the past for giving us today: I cannot stress that enough. I understand that people have new tastes each year, so you want to make sure that you match the energy and the vibe of the year.

It’s hard to explain how I find the balance. I ask my friends and collaborators, what they feel. I took that into consideration [with LIT], and checked my gut feeling. Did I feel [like] it mixed my Chinese sound with the present or modern without losing it? It’s [a] feeling I get after listening to the record time after time in my car or in the studio.

DBU: With reference to bringing “China to the world”. How do you think LIT did that, apart from, of course, being a mash-up of different influences?

Lay Zhang: I think this album is the first of its kind in a way. It’s very unique: we brought together new and legendary producers to create beautiful music. We had traditional and modern day stories to showcase the idea of the past and the present, to show the world that Chinese artists can be creative. They can think more deeply about music. I want people to know that we are improving everyday. We are working hard. This is what LIT shows.

DBU: Historically, western audiences have thought of Mando-pop as being “very vain or bland.” You have always wanted to push forward Mixed Mando-pop through your work. How do you hope to change this perception of Mando-pop globally through your music?

Lay Zhang: It is a work in progress. We are still improving and developing M-pop. Since I was a child, I have always had big goals and dreams. I want to show the world what China is really about, that we are respectful people trying to better ourselves.

DBU: Your current approach to your work makes me curious. The words “one of China’s biggest celebrities” are often used in your context. With the fan-base and work you’ve built over the years, you could very well have taken the safer route and stuck to the previous sounds you have experimented with before, because anything you make is guaranteed to be a hit. So why is it important for you to keep making the kind of music you do, in the way you make it?

Lay Zhang: I want to challenge myself and see what I can do. I admit, I don’t always succeed, but I’d rather try different genres and sing in different languages to see what I am capable of. Like any artist, I want my music to reach more people, so you have to branch out and try new things, but at the same time, not lose who you are. I have great fans that support me and allow me to dream bigger. I want to pave the path for the next generation to share their music with the world.

DBU: You’ve worked both in South Korea and China. With K-pop having a moment in the global spotlight, what are some things that you feel M-pop could learn or borrow from K-pop?

Lay Zhang: I think it’s great that K-pop is having its moment. In M-pop, we need to put ourselves out there more. We need to meet fans in every city and town to create that one-on-one interaction. I think there are enough artists with quality music to match the artists in K-pop: we just need to focus on sharing Mando-pop.

DBU: For the past few years, you have been heavily involved in music reality shows geared towards bringing out China’s next musical stars. There was Idol Producer, Youth With You, Street Dance of China: what are your hopes from the next generation, and why this interest?

Lay Zhang: The next generation inspires me. Their dreams and efforts inspire me to work harder and be a good role model. I hope they can focus on creating great art and work that they can be proud of. Their work should speak for itself. If everyone can do this, they can do this. If everyone can do this, we can push the boundaries of music and art. We can create works that leave people in awe.

DBU: In the larger context of your artistry, what impact has this year had on you personally?

Lay Zhang: COVID-19 slowed my life down like everyone else. We have all experienced difficulties, but I was able to think about my music and career more clearly. I decided that I should go after the things I want as soon as I could. For my artistry, I realized I needed to focus on music I made, my company, and make music that really carried the culture and vibe of my country.

DBU: Observing your trajectory from when you just started out to now, I was thinking about how it is very clear where your professional priorities lie. What about personal ones? What are you focusing on personally in the coming year?

Lay Zhang: I think about this a lot, and it’s hard to separate my work and personal life. But I think I only have that much time before I run out of energy. I am always thirsty (laughs), so I know I won’t be able to continue this forever. I want to keep pushing until I can’t. So, then I can focus on my personal life knowing I gave it all to my career.

DBU: I asked some fans if they had anything to say to you, and most of them wanted me to relay the same thing: please take a well-deserved break! Now that LIT has had its successful run, is it time for a vacation, or is there more to come?

Lay Zhang: My cats give me a lot of confidence and happiness. They make it easier to face each day; it’s nice to know you have someone waiting for you at home. But I will take a vacation when I turn 40 (laughs). Of course, there is more to come: the trainees we are receiving are so talented. I am excited to create something that will hopefully last a long time, and will improve and uphold the entertainment industry in China.

L Singh @ Don’t Bore Us

#exo #lay #t: interview

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whitehotharlots · 3 years

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Associationism: A postmortem for liberal decency

In the last half decade, liberal political writing has undergone a profound seachange. This has infected all strata of media: from braindead outlets like Adbusters, to intentionally digestible pap such as USA Today, to our august papers of record (only two of which remain; one is owned by the world’s richest man), all the way up to self-styled intellectual journals and peer-reviewed scholarship. This change can even be found in literal children’s media and grade school curricula. It deserves to be examined.

For lack of a better term, I refer to this shift as an adoption of associationism. Cause and effect has been abandoned as an analytical frame. The devices that used to be relied upon to adjudicate cause and effect, such as scientific method, statistical analysis, balanced reporting, and even basic “X leads to Y” logic, have likewise been marked as problematic vectors of evil.

Now, you might say this has been a long time coming. Scientific method has been used to design and excuse a bevy of historical wrongs, and balanced reporting is often deployed to obscure morally unambiguous phenomena. Those are fair points, but an astute observer will notice that these adjudication mechanisms are still deployed within liberal discourse, just that they are now used only selectively. Rigor and attention to context are now considered problematic--white, male, cis-normative, whatever--and this allows for otherwise inherently evil mechanisms of truth adjudication to be deployed only when they are guaranteed to enforce the desired narrative, often by writers who are shamelessly fabricating evidence. I mean, why not? It’s fascism to be fact checked, after all.

Importantly, moral and factual correctness have become collapsed into one another. A statement or belief is True to the extent that it is Right, and vice versa. There exist no confounding variables or contradictory phenomena. The liberal writer’s job, therefore, is to center their own subjective perception (referred to as “lived experience”) or the subjective perception of someone in a supposedly more marginalized position, and then craft a narrative that puts this perception beyond all moral (and therefore factual) reproach.

The liberal writer’s process is, generally, as follows:

Zero in on a moral outrage of some kind, be it pressing and manifest or petty and completely subjective--everything has the same weight within this frame.

Narrate this outrage via the “lived experience” of a subject who shares the writer’s opinion.

Cherrypick a handful of statistics, studies, or expert opinions that appear to lend validity to the writer’s understanding of the outrage, being careful to ignore any context or ambiguities that might soften or even fully discredit the outrage.

Demonize anyone or anything that problematizes--through their opinions or their existence--the writer’s understanding of the outrage. This is achieved typically by associating the problematizer with supposedly empowered groups, who are evil.

Clarify in no uncertain terms: anyone who does not share this outrage is a member of the evil groups, even if they are very literally not a member of those groups.

This has all been framed as a form of radical moral clarity, providing space for marginalized voices to express their once-unutterable truths, which will in turn bring about the changes this country desperately needs. But, oh no, it turns out that every media organization in this country is stolidly against any actual reform. All of our major presses and news outlets are still owned by austere capitalist psychos, including the aforementioned richest human being in the history of the world. Universities are still MBA-run shitholes that would have students march into incinerators the moment that doing so became more profitable than providing them with resources for identity affirmation. And media aggregation--the manner through which words appear before people’s eyes, 90-odd percent of the time via a screen--is controlled by a small handful of the most megalomaniacal companies on earth.

So, while we have indeed radically changed our practices of communication and truth adjudication, doing so has not resulted in any radical social changes, or even really any structural changes whatsoever. We’ve just made it radically more difficult to come to an honest understanding of the causes of social malignancies, which in turn has made it radically more easy for the vampires who run this country to make everyone else’s lives radically worse. Radical, dude!

There is no idea so cruel or horrible that it cannot be made to appear progressive under this new frame. Come up with any hypothetical, no matter how evil, and within a few seconds a media-savvy reader should be able to fashion an adequately woke headline:

Hypothetical examples:

Abolishing school lunch programs: “Should We Really Be Nourishing White Bodies?”

Pro-female genital mutilation: “The Inherent Transphobia of Those Who Oppose ‘Female Circumcision.’”

Let’s start using napalm again: “Once Considered an Effective Tool of Precision Warfare, Napalm Was Demonized by Those Who Fear Non-Normative Bodies”

Indian Residential Schools: “Sheltered From Whiteness, These Communities Were a Place Where Native Excellence Could Thrive”

Here we see the Associative aspect of Associationism. Cause and effect no longer exist, and so malignancy is a contagion, the result of the presence of bad people who cause badness. Members of statistically majoritarian groups are presumed to be empowered, and therefore oppressive. And since majoritarian groups contain by definition a majority of people, you will be sure to find their members among the detractors of your position. And even if the members of that majority make up a minority of your detractors, that’s still okay, because context is a white supremacist construct used to obscure moral clarity, and you just so happen to be the arbiter of morality by virtue of being yourself.

Now, to be fair, not every piece written in this style is done in the pursuit of abject evil. Some are, but a solid plurality are instead written in an attempt to remediate a genuine social wrong. The trouble is, they’re being printed in venues controlled by people who do not desire reform; written in thrall to a political party that does not desire reform; and reliant upon the subjective perspectives of academics, politicians, and NGO bloodsuckers who do not desire reform. This leads, inevitably, to an understanding of social problems that occludes all possibility of reform, only now the discoursal boundaries are so droolingly retarded that you cannot mention the fact that these discussions do not contain even a hypothetical description of how reform might take place.

The point is, radically altering the manner in which social problems are understood, measured, and discussed does not lead--automatically or otherwise--to those social problems being positively addressed. Shifting rhetorical frames can be a precondition for change, yes, but it can just as easily be a means of calcifying the status quo. Unequivocally, our embrace of associationism has accomplished the latter.

We can easily discern the utility of associationism so far as our elite castes are concerned: it’s getting harder and harder to simply deny the existence of malignancies, so instead let’s just insist that everyone understand them in the dumbest possible way. Their popularity among the non-elites is due primarily to American Puritanism: the more upsetting and uncomfortable something makes us feel, the more we assume it must be working.

But Puritanism is a two-way street, and the true believers tend to be the ones at the base of the food chain. Regular folx will go through the motions in an earnest desire to do something, anything, to cleanse themselves of whatever horrible brutality video they found on their timeline this morning. They can be annoying, but you can’t blame them. The real malignancy of associationism is how it’s allowed a small group of conniving cocksuckers a means of enhancing their professional status by making their cruelest impulses appear progressive.

I started this essay with the intention of digging deep into Chris Lehmann’s abominable TNR piece in which he insists that the men driven mad and homeless after participating in our genocide in Vietnam were actually doing greviance politics. By the time I finished, he had been very thoroughly destroyed. I still think it’ll be worth the effort to do a deep dive to show the machinations of his horrific essay, but has already gone long so I’ll save that for later this week.

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arabhamlet · 4 years

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why you should read the heartless divine

hello guys! i haven’t used tumblr in a while, so i hope i tag this correctly, but i really needed to write this post to promote a book i think many, many people will enjoy reading for a number of reasons, and i figured i should give it a shot.

the heartless divine is varsha ravi’s debut novel, self-published last november through amazon. it is a ya fantasy romance inspired by mythology and sangam era india, and you can purchase it as an ebook or as a physical copy on amazon.

i 100% recommend it to anyone who enjoys mythology, reincarnation/soulmates, tragic but tender star-crossed romance (and not in a generic ya way either), or just anything with complex plot, character, and relationships—which, i realize, basically means everyone, but in my defence it is really good and worth a read no matter who you are.

what’s it about?

the heartless divine follows two paralleling narratives. the first is set in the distant past, and follows suri, a princess forced into being an assassin by her warlike family, as she is betrothed to the boy king of a neighbouring land after being assigned the task to kill him once the wedding is complete, only to find her plans going off-kilter when she encounters kiran, a strange prophet who predicts his own incoming death and the catastrophe soon to occur. the second is set in modern-day, and follows a reincarnated suri, with no memories of her past life, who finds her life inexplicably tied to a changed kiran, who she does not remember but who remembers her.

the plot is a bit more complex than this, and this is really just a quick summary, but more than that it’s a story about humans and our relationships to each other, to mortality, and to fate.

i highly recommend it - it can be a little slow to start off with, but once the historical plot starts going i found it pretty much impossible to put down. even though it’s been a few months since i read it, i find myself going back to it pretty much constantly. it’s fantastic both as a ya novel to read for fun, and as something far more complex with so many themes, characters, and dynamics to unpack.

but if you need a bit more encouragement:

why should i read it?

as i mentioned, the plot is incredibly engaging. unlike a lot of ya, as well, the heartless divine is super character-based and has incredibly strong characters in its protagonists. the past storyline also has a running mystery - and the reveal at the end as to who is the real villain definitely caught me off-guard on my first read. the past storyline is also deeply tragic in many ways, hitting you emotionally to great effect, and the climax is absolutely one of the most impactful climaxes of any ya book i’ve ever read—i’m making an effort not to spoil anything while writing this, because the pure emotional punch of the climax should be read completely blind.

ravi’s writing is absolutely gorgeous. she has an incredible command over the written word and wrote some incredibly amazing prose in this book. her writing is at once poetic and also incredibly versatile, fitting into beautiful romantic declarations and sharp dialogue and tense scenes of conflict. i won’t include any massive chunks, but here are some of my favourite lines:

Where does the divinity go, then? he had asked her. She had shrugged. To the sky. That is where all divinity goes after it is dead. But the sky was too far away, and there was not enough left of him, divine or not, to guarantee safe passage on a trip so long.

She had always been afraid of hope, in the same way she figured most people were afraid of black holes. Desire was something that consumed, she knew, and to desire impossibility was to let it consume you entirely. hearts splintered with love and splintered with loss, and to fear one was to fear both—it was safer to resist them both, to draw thick, black demarcations in shining permanent marker, explicit, clear lines that gently reminded her of what could and could not be desired.

“You live as though you are already dead,” she whispered. each word sunk into him, cut through his heart with clean, sharp blades. “You live as though your life is nothing but a prerequisite for death, for true purpose. Have you ever fought to stay alive? Have you ever allowed yourself to think of life as something to love?”

They had the same fine boned face, hollow-cheeked and haunted, the same air of a saint that had burnt away to nothing and held the ashes himself. And yet, they were not the same. It was a twisted, imperfect projection—it was him, but not all of him. This was his savage divinity laid bare.

What were love stories but dreams of worlds where the sun and moon could linger beside one another long enough to learn the language of the other’s heart?

ravi also has an incredible grasp on the themes that she’s writing with. above all, the heartless divine is about humanity and what makes people human—our relationships with each other and with our own place in the world. and in my opinion, she expresses these ideas with great maturity and wisdom.

however, for the most part, the heartless divine’s greatest strength is its characters. kiran is a deeply complex character, a prophet caught between his duty to die as a martyr and his desire to make his own choices and follow what he truly loves. he has a complicated relationship to humanity, but no human more than himself, as he struggles to understand the parameters of his own humanity—the place where his mortality ends and his divinity begins. at first, the kiran of the past and the kiran of the present seem deeply separated from each other, but as the story progresses you begin to understand the tragedy of how kiran became who he is in the modern-day.

at first, suri seems like a typical ya female protagonist, but as the story progresses and she begins to let her guard down a bit more, you really start to see how interesting and complicated she is as a character. she doesn’t believe in gods or fate at the beginning of either storyline, but by the end she slowly starts to accept hope into her heart—ending in two very different ways—and advocates for ignoring fate and following the life you want, desperately searching for the happy ending that you deserve. she also has a deeply captivating character voice, and was, certainly at the beginning, my favourite of the three pov characters.

but my personal favourite character is viro, the primary antagonist of the past plotline (though—no major spoilers—he finally makes an appearance in the modern plotline very close to the end). most people i know who have read the heartless divine feel similarly about viro. ravi makes him a deeply compelling character, fleshing out his motivations and reasoning and in turn writing one of my favourite relationships in the book in his complex brotherly relationship with kiran. i don’t want to spoil much about him, but he is a really interesting character and, though technically the antagonist, is just as compelling as the protagonists.

on the same note, before i talk about the romance in the book, i have to mention viro and kiran’s dynamic, as i feel it drives the past plot in many ways and is deeply interesting. the two are adoptive brothers, and find themselves butting heads almost constantly over their different ideological stances; and though it’s clear they love each other, soon enough you start to worry if love is enough.

onto the romance, and of course i have to talk about suri and kiran, because—how could i not. they’re literal soulmates! two souls who find each other in every lifetime! they’re kindred spirits no matter what, in both past and present, two people who understand each other deeply on a metaphysical level, and no matter what their scenes together were a great joy. they’re a romance where both of them help each other grow, even when surrounded by chaos and catastrophe. here’s one of my favourite lines in the book in case you need some more explanation. this is romance.

“‘Love is dangerous, blinding,’” he quoted, voice soft against her cheeks in an empty semblance of amusement. He pulled back slightly, just enough that she could see the gentleness, the raw warmth in his gaze. The clean lack of regret. “And yet, I see you so clearly.”

it’s perhaps less explicit—but bear in mind this is the first book in a series—but ravi also sets up the dynamic between viro and his guard, companion, and best friend tarak in a way that...is practically impossible not to read as romantic. i won’t spoil it because it is something you have to see in person, but some of the most emotionally charged scenes in the novel deal with their dynamic. here’s another line for good measure. they really said we do it for the girls and the tenderyearning gays that’s it.

Tarak let out a ragged sigh, lost and despairing. Viro reached up and put a hand on his, traced the lines of his fingers. he watched him do it, entranced by the movement and saddened by it as well. Finally, he asked, “If I begged, would you stay?” Viro’s fingers stilled in their movement, suddenly hyper-aware of the way Tarak’s hands shook upon the embroidered fabric of his tunic. as if he couldn’t bear to hold him tighter, as if the mere action would wrench him away.

the world building is also incredibly well done, as is the mythology ravi sets up and the folk stories she tells. also, for good measure, ravi is an indian writer and her story is, as aforementioned, deeply inspired by sangam india. i don’t necessarily have the cultural context to interact with the worldbuilding completely, but from where i stand it’s immensely well done.

the second book in the series is currently being written, and i recommend picking up your copy of the heartless divine soon before the series continues. once again, it’s available on amazon, and here is its page on goodreads and thestorygraph in case you want to add it to your tbr!

also, for good measure, shoot me a message here or on twitter (where i normally am) if you do decide to read it and want to discuss it! for good measure, here’s one of my favourite lines from the book—just as a closing statement.

“I want to hear all of your stories,” she said, fierce as fire. “Every single one. I don’t care whether they have happy endings or not.”

#bookblr #book recommendations #book recs #yalit #ya lit #diverse ya #diverse fantasy #ya recs #booklr #ya recommendations #books #the heartless divine

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dailyexo · 3 years

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[INTERVIEW] Lay - 201216 Don’t Bore Us: “M-Pop star Lay Zhang tells us about his music, dreams, and starting his own company”

"Chinese Megastar Lay Zhang wants to bring ‘China to the world’ with his music. He talks to Don’t Bore Us about how he plans to achieve his dreams.