#.....am i supposed to see the racial undertones or.... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sylver-drawer · 3 years

Text

A prompt in class had made me realize something deep within me—my hate for physical books.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate books because they’re physical. I’d actually love it, but rather what I despise…

Is what is contained within those books.

Where I live, physical books you can only get when visiting libraries or book stores unless specially ordered online. Yet I am never satisfied with what is offered to me, simply because, I’m tired of it.

I am so absolutely tired of seeing the same exact things over and over again.

To give an example, my tastes aren’t that condensed nor diverse. I love thriller, I love Mystery, but what I find the most interest in, is Fantasy Romance.

And saying that should already tell you exactly what I’m talking about.

I am so tired of seeing the exact same tropes over and over again. This is a problem in all stories, physical or online, in general—however, it appears to me that published and physical books are almost always having these qualities. When searching online, I can always somehow find at least a handful of stories that is different from the others and gives at least a fraction of what I need. But in libraries? Book stores? I can’t do that, because they all follow the same pattern one way or another because those tropes are what people only ever seem to want, which is why a lot of authors who stray from those tropes aren’t as well known.

Frankly, I’m tired of everything being reused or rebranded.

I wouldn’t mind the wizards and demons, the werewolves and vampires, if ONLY they weren’t just there to be there.

Let me explain. Witches and Wizards tend to follow the same pattern. People who use magic, which is simple enough. But the problem is, is that it ends with just that. In most stories I come across, wizards are included in a very weak magic system in which they can use magic to do basically anything they want. Something fell and broke? Use magic to fix it. There’s a fire? Summon water to put it out.

It’s simple. But that repeated simplicity is what makes me tired.

There is never any depth. There is no expansion or lore that explains the nitty gritty details, nor makes it important. Magic in fantasy stories, is most commonly, cause and effect. Problem, and fix. Something bad, changed to good. Hurt, then to heal.

In fantasy, magic is simply one layer—magic people can use magic to do anything. There’s no limit, there’s no depth, there’s nothing that makes it unique. Magic in fantasy, all falls under the broad topic of just ‘magic’. Shooting fireballs, summoning a river, causing a storm to drive away your enemies, lightning bolts to fend them off—all can fall under just magic. Using this, it might be controversial to say, but Harry Potter is an extremely soft magic system. Wizards can cast magic through words, yes, but it’s exactly that. They can cast ‘magic’, and that magic is an umbrella term that essentially means, “With enough training, they can look up the words in a magic dictionary and use whatever magic they want to do anything they want”.

There is no depth. There is no extra layer, it’s simply ‘magic’.

And I’m not even done rambling. I haven’t even touched magical races in fantasy, which I’ll actually transition right into.

I am tired of race conflict in fantasy. Not because its bad, but because they’re more often than not, poorly written. Let’s take Twilight as an example.

Werewolves hate vampires. Vampires hate werewolves. Why? Because werewolves bad, and vampires bad. That’s literally it. No deeper meaning, no actual societal issues, just “ew, icky vampire/werewolf”. In fact, in twilight it doesn’t even appear they hate eachother. If Bella didn’t even exist, what would Edward and Jacob fight about? If you notice, they only use eachother’s race to appeal to Bella and put down the other rival. “Bella, you can’t love him because he’s a dirty vampire”, or, “Bella, you can’t love him because he’s a mangy wolf pup”. Setting aside the obvious racist undertones that’s never important nor addressed critically within the story, the only time dislike about the others’ race is talked about, is only ever addressed not because they hate that specific race, but as a petty remark to bad talk their love rival.

So, in theory, the two races aren’t even… against eachother. Thinking back, all the times it was vampire vs werewolf in twilight, it was all because of Bella wasn’t it. And not because of general dislike of the others’ race, but over a human girl…

I’ve trailed off from my original point, but basically, race vs race within fantasy plots aren’t actually because of the race. I think the only fantasy series I’ve seen that remotely does racial societal conflict well is Lord of the Rings. Elves hate dwarves because they’re greedy, crude, and brutish. Dwarves hate elves because they view them as selfish and always seemingly on their high horse. They stereotype one another, and when they look beyond those stereotypes is when they start bonding and actually forming friendships. They then realize that those stereotypes didn’t matter and were harmful.

That’s an example I would love to see more in fantasy in general. Make the magical races dislike and judge eachother because of their race, and then overcome it while addressing it. Don’t add in races that hate eachother when they’re all literally just the exact same. And also, make the races different! Even humans practice different cultures, and that’s what makes us diverse. In the LOTR franchise, racial bias and hate isn’t simply because, “they’re x race”. It’s because they stereotype people within that race, a stereotype that’s just an exaggerated version of qualities they all just happened to have. In Twilight, I’d argue that there isn’t anything that sets the werewolves and vampires apart other than their superhuman abilities. In LOTR, taking their races away the qualities the characters had were still eminent. Legolas was a bit proud and calm demeanor ed under pressure because he was naturally like that, as well as how he was raised as an elven prince. Gimley fights violently with an axe, and puts his whole body into his fighting style. His words also come off as rough and unfiltered, while Legolas’ voice is smoother and speech well spoken due to his background. The traits they found in eachother due to racial stereotypes still linger and remain. While yes, werewolves were heavily based off of indigenous people, there wasn’t any clear examples of them practicing it that was essential to the conflict and characters other than reminding the audience every once and a while. If Jacob were the only werewolf shown, the Jacob-Bella-Edward conflict could easily just be seen as two roleplaying white boys fighting over a girl. That’s how important their racial identities of vampire and werewolf mattered.

(And please!!! Remember lore. Generations and generations of racism impacts people who grew up with it. Some people change and break away from that stigma of unadultered hate, some can only partly break away even while educated with unconscious internal bias, and some continue to nurture themselves in it and even spread it. Not every person under one umbrella ends up the same, and that applies to characters too. Taking inspiration from real life, look at the time we live in now. Hundreds of years gone by, and while things are certainly better, the dark stains haven’t even gone away and most likely won’t even in the distant future. The past two years are proof of that.)

There’s no point in writing racial conflict in your story if there’s nothing that sets them apart from one another (I’m not saying people need a reason for real life racism because there are so many people who hate certain races just because they’re that race, but story wise, it’s easier to show what’s commonly hate due to stereotypes and stigma that people make for that race). It’s like the spider man pointing meme. How are you supposed to be antagonistic with someone who’s literally the same as you? “I guess you’re not like other spider men” coming from a spider man???

Prefacing, I’m not saying racism is good. I’m saying including race conflict for the sake of race conflict is very empty and purposeless, which is what I often find in fantasy or romance-fantasy. Racial conflict apparently doesn’t matter until the main character is directly involved, in which only then does it affect them that it’s brought up and only because it affects them. A similar example is including LGBTQ+ characters just for the sake of sexual diversity, in which—

That actually leads into my next topic.

Romance.

How many. How many published books must there be of romance that completely overrides the plot as well as the characters’ other relationships? How many stories must be made in which the fantasy aspect is completely pushed aside and no longer included in the plot because the story wants to entirely focus on the romance drama between the main character, love interest, and best friend? Or not even best friend, miscommunication in general!

How hard, is it to write a story where the couple is healthy, and love and don’t doubt eachother, who trust eachother entirely? Like really.

And! And!

The moment when romance is introduced, everything else doesn’t. seem. to. matter! At that point, it’s not even fantasy even more. It’s just a rom com, because watching the couple fight over nothing is hilarious because they’re in the middle of a war. And the other characters don’t seem to matter anymore either. I am so tired of plots being thrown away to focus on the drama between the two leads, and for once just want a fantasy boom of stories depicting healthy relationships with actually unique magic systems and logical well written conflicts.

And diversity! In Relationships! I am so tired of only ever seeing poorly written drama filled heterosexual relationships in romances. In fantasy romances. Give me my wlw wizards who explore their war torn world and have to defend the people they love with intricate, costly, magic systems.

Can we just have. A literary revolution, in which a rise of stories where characters can have relationships—non romantic relationships—with other characters. Can male and female characters finally love eachother to the ends of the world without romance. It’s so easy to write. Love is so easy to write between any gender or sex. So why does it seem to be there can only be one kind predominantly in media? In published media?

Occasionally I can find diverse stories like this on the internet, but never can I find these in libraries.

Like it’s. It’s so, so easy to write love and companionship between characters of diverse identities and cultures. Even in heterosexual fantasy romance stories, I want to be able to see relationships outside the romance being as strong as the main romance. Between the girls, between the boys, and those in between. Men can be in love with men, women in love with women, and men in love with women without needing to force their loves against eachother. A man and woman can be written to love eachother dearly without any romance ever between them, because that’s how it’s like in real life as well. So often do main characters in fantasy stories have some sort of dark past that rid them of any familial love, which in turn ruins them for the capacity of platonic love, which makes people believe the only way for them to find love is romantically. Even in children’s books, there’s always the princess abandoned or overly protected by her parents who eventually finds solace in the pressence of a dry, brooding knight or charming prince. They fall in love, and that’s the only thing that’s ever positively shown. The love between the main character and the love interest. Because to society, romance is seen as the strongest form of affection.

But, it isn’t.

People are different, and to a lot of people who do and don’t have romance in their lives, it doesn’t mean they can’t love anyone else. In society, the only love that seems to exist is romance. It’s the only thing people tend to promote, and yet, people forget what love is. It’s care, it’s worry. Love is painful and happy. It’s sometimes angry and frustrating, but sometimes its something you need. Love is stubborn, yet so easily broken. Love was never just romance, and it feels like the world forgets that.

It’s frustrating, because it feels like anything published at your local library follows the opposite pattern. Because it’s what people believe the public wants, and what the public will only ever accept. Sometimes, it’s all people only know how to write. Sometimes, its all editors and publishers will ever approve of. And sometimes, its all people ever look for. Because either they’re afraid, stigmatize and despise it, or just don’t care for it.

At some point, this had turned from a ramble about how physical books lack diversity, to how media in general lacks diversity.

I do believe that one day in the future, media will change. Literary media will change. But as of now? The majority of published and physical books haven’t diverted from that pattern, and most likely won’t for a long time. I know so many stories are beginning to change online now that the new generation has informed themselves and become interested in new ideas and topics, but as far as physical publication goes? The world won’t accept these changes, not for a long time.

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protectduffy · 5 years

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When You’re Hurt (M)

male edition! featuring the camp boahs along with trelawny and eagle flies! female edition coming shortly! and let me know if you want any more characters added!

Trigger warning: violence, injury, cursing, racial remarks

this is so looong, i am so sorry!

Arthur

- you always have a warm smile for Arthur when you return to camp, shortly before falling into his arms

- however, this time when you came back from a robbery of a small bank, you walked straight past him with your head down

- concerned, Arthur followed like a wounded pup, trailing after you

- “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he keeps his voice very soft, quiet

- you try to ignore him with only an incoherent mumble of an answer as you find your cot and all but collapse on it

- immediately he knows something went wrong, you start crying to yourself and he falls to his knees beside the cot, touching you all over and looking for the source of the pain

- he finds a few bruises and scrapes, but nothing too frightening

- realising you were hurting emotionally, too, Arthur hesitates before lying beside you and sliding his arms around your waist, murmuring softly to you

- when you finally decide to tell him that the robbery went wrong and how disappointed in yourself you are, he scoffs and recounts all the times he’s failed miserably at something, reassuring you of how much he cares for you always, no matter what

Charles

- it was supposed to be a quick hunting trip to bring back a couple of rabbits or a deer if you were lucky, but when you returned to camp empty handed, Charles was quite surprised

- he respects your hunting ability and has helped you to hone in on your skills, so to come back after hours of being gone with nothing so much as a fish, he knows something went awry

- he doesn’t push you, though, watching from the campfire as you trail into your tent, disappearing from sight

- only then does Charles approach, so as to give you some space but also ensure your safety

- he finds you sat on the bed, sniffling and inspecting your bleeding forearm

- first he feels fear first, then concern

- “What happened? Did someone hurt you?” his voice has a mild shake of emotion as he grasps at your wrist to inspect the zigzag cuts on your forearm

- it isn’t too deep, but neither is it pleasant, and it will likely scar

- embarrassed, you admit that your old hunting bow snapped when you pulled it taut and ended up whipping back against your arm

- “You should always come to me if you get hurt, I want to keep you safe, and I’ll never look down on you for accidents.”

- Charles promises you it isn’t silly and that he’ll help you make a new bow, a sturdy one, after he bandages your arm

Javier

- you had set out for a train robbery with a few others, but Javier had stayed back to help around the camp with a few pressing matters

- he wasn’t too worried about you, but he did constantly look up at the horizon in the hopes of catching a glimpse of your returning figure

- when it grew dark and still nothing appeared, Javier became restless

- he had just grabbed his weapons to go find the others when the noises startled him

- you stumbled into camp with Bill, Dutch and John, obviously limping but trying to hide it

- Javier’s eyes narrow, he had made Dutch swear to keep you safe because he couldn’t be there himself to protect you

- you can’t hide the limp from him, and Javier becomes like a dog with a bone, swearing and storming over and not once showing signs of letting this go

- “The hell happened?! I told you to keep them safe, hijo de puta!”

- Dutch explains calmly that you were kicked and fell off the train when attacked by one of the guards but that you were fine

- Javier, deciding not to explode in front of everyone, picks you up without another word and cradles you on his lap by the fire, cooing softly, even if you insist you’re fine

- he uses the injury as an excuse for the rest of the week to keep you in bed, or to carry you around constantly, never leaving your side until you’re healed

- he plays you songs on his guitar to keep your spirits up

Dutch

- Dutch has enemies everywhere, and he’s always treading very carefully so as to not alert those enemies to his whereabouts

- unfortunately, this doesn’t always work out in his favour

- you had gone into the local town to collect some groceries for the camp when you were recognised by two men whom Dutch had once had a run-in with

- when you saw them drop their drinks and come charging towards you, it was already too late to make a run for it

- overwhelmed, you tried your best to fend yourself off and ended up killing one of the men before you could finally break free

- you ran all the way back to camp, bursting through the trees like a wild animal with hair sticking up and eyes bloodshot

- “The-they k-knew me, I c-c-couldn’t stop th-the-”

- you had burst into tears before you could finish the sentence, with Susan and Arthur immediately at your side to hold you up

- covered in bruises and with a split lip, you looked quite the mess

- Dutch, attracted by the sound of your distressed voice, emerged from his tent and stood for a fraction of a second in shock

- you could see the expressions form on his face, surprise, worry, hatred

- he cleared the distance to you inhumanly fast and pulled you against his chest after checking for any other injuries, holding you against him, feeling your body shake with sobs

- “Who did it, darling?” he speaks softly so as not to startle you, but the bitter undertone is unmissable

- when you tell him, Dutch kisses your temple and gently gives you back to a concerned Susan, promising he’ll be right back

- the storm in his eyes is one you won’t forget as he left with guns in hand, not returning until the next day covered in blood and quietly returning to your side

Hosea

- O’Driscoll boys had always been a problem, but never more so than when you found yourself in a saloon alone

- having decided to take a break, you found a quiet corner and sipped your drink, watching out the window as the sun slowly sank in the sky

- three rough looking men approached you, leering and nudging one another, laughing to themselves

- your face went pale, you recognised them as the O’Driscoll dogs who so often plagued you and your gang

- trying to ignore them didn’t work, one of them pulled you up from your seat and you immediately went into fight-or-flight, drawing the gun at your hip and firing blindly

- you managed to escape in the chaos of the saloon in uproar, the men after you losing track of your form but not before one of them landed a shot in your left arm

- crying out, you managed to throw yourself on your horse and ride back to camp, leaning heavily to one side as the blood continued to weep through your wound

- your whole body was pale and sweaty as it slid from the saddle and thumped on the grass

- Hosea looked up from the book he was reading at the sound of your approach, alarm bells ringing in his head as he watched you fall

- he ran across the camp and skidded in the dirt, pulling you up onto his lap

- you managed to mumble something about O’Driscoll and that you were sorry before passing out

- “No, not like this, you’re not dying like this!”

- he makes the others bring medicine, bandages and hot water to help you, but never once does Hosea get off the ground with you gently on his lap

- when you wake up two days later, you learn that he had sent Arthur and John to take care of your attackers, but Hosea himself hadn’t left his seat next to your bed the whole time

Lenny

- skinning animals was still very new to you, though Pearson was being very patient (most of the time) in teaching you so that you could assist him with the stew

- in fact, you were beginning to feel like a real expert a few days in with your knife

- spying your boyfriend Lenny walking across camp with some firewood, you decided to flourish a little, twirling the knife and trying to look casual as you did so

- unfortunately, this ploy didn’t work

- the blade caught in some of the pelt you were removing and flipped on itself, cutting across your palm in a short line

- with a slightly yelp, you at once had Lenny fawning over you, grabbing your hand and twisting it every which way - gently as he could - to inspect the wound

- he isn’t the best with injuries since he panics when he sees that you’re wounded

- thankfully, Pearson knows what to do and instructs the poor boy to clean then bandage the injury

- although it will heal in time, Lenny insists that you stay close to his side in case of any more unpleasant accidents (but he loves the excuse to have you beside him)

Micah

- Micah doesn’t like to be viewed as clingy or overprotective, but he does often stick by your side like glue, making sure you won’t get into any trouble without him (or because of him)

- when you were waiting for him outside the gun merchant’s store, he was drawn to focus on the sounds of hushed argument

- as soon as Micah had disappeared inside, a dark figure emerged at the front of the store to interrogate you, asking if you knew Mr. Bell and how that was so

- suspicious, you didn’t give away any details of Micah, the gang or yourself, but this only proved to anger the man

- he flashed his badge at you and drew his pistol, at which point it was too late to reach for your own without being shot at

- the detective attempted to force you to your knees as you fought him off, struggling to find grip in the dust

- “Micah!”

- he responds like lightning, dramatically kicking the door open and storming outside

- nobody messes with his baby

- he doesn’t even mock or anger the detective like he normally would, instead Micah draws his freshly cleaned and gleaming guns, firing six rounds into the detective

- the whole town is alight then, but Micah is more than happy to help you onto his horse, murmuring assurances to you the whole time, riding out of the chaos and clutching you (and his guns) tightly

- “Don’t worry, I got’cha, honey.”

John

- on a hunting trip with John, you were both relaxing in the shade waiting for prey to take the bait in the clearing ahead of the two of you

- resting against his chest and sat up against a tree, you share hushed conversations and jokes while you wait

- after an hour, a buck wanders into the clearing and approaches the bait, his antlers catching some of the morning light

- unfortunately, you were not the only hunters in the area

- a growl sounds out behind John and you swivel around in his arms to spot a looming grizzly, which had been attracted by the buck, baring his teeth

- John pushes you aside and leaps to his feet to draw his weapons, heart pounding in his throat with pure adrenaline and fear for your safety

- the bear takes a solid three bullets and swipes in retaliation before it scampers away to lick it’s wounds

- John is hesitant to slide his guns away, panting, as he turns to find you

- the bear’s claws had just managed to clip your jaw and though the injury is not immense, it is something which needs to be treated

- regardless, he swears and pulls off his shirt to press it to your jaw, stopping the bleeding

- “It don’t look too bad. I’m so sorry I didn’t see it sooner!”

- after apologising profusely and unnecessarily carrying you back to camp, he makes you smile by suggesting that maybe you’ll have a smaller version of his own scars

- it would be safe to say that he always holds your hand from that point on when you’re out together, just in case

Bill

- admittedly, the rain was probably not the best weather choice for a walk, but that didn’t outright occur to you when you decided you wanted a break from listening to everyone bickering

- Bill was asleep already, exhausted from a recent robbery, and you wanted to clear your head

- exploring the surrounding areas seemed like a good way to do that

- you wandered along a nearby stream so you would know how to get back, and you followed your feet up a gradually inclining hill

- however, you hadn’t noticed just how steep that incline was getting until your breath started coming in pants

- when you realised that you had probably gone too far and were at risk of losing the trail back, you carefully tried to tread your way back down the hill

- slowly making each step count, you were about halfway down when your heel lost grip and you fell head first, thankfully flipping and rolling before skidding the rest of the way down to the stream

- the pain in your wrist was immense from having landed on it, but your pride was probably the most wounded

- very slowly, you trudged back to camp, hoping nobody would notice the mud stains or the throbbing red bruises around your wrist

- unfortunately for you, bill had woken to find you missing and was already in a mood

- as soon as he lay eyes on you, he felt the urge to scold you for scaring him like that, but was distracted by the shame in your eyes and the way you held your wrist awkwardly to your chest

- “What the hell happened? I told you not to go out alone!”

- he isn’t very sure how to treat you but presents you to Strauss with an urgent look in his eyes

- Bill hovers behind you the whole time you’re examined and put in a sling

- he takes the instructions to rest very seriously, grumbling about how you worried him as he holds you that night, smoothing your hair

Uncle

- it was a silly accident, but that didn’t make it any less painful

- “Shit, Sean, get me a cloth!”

- you scold him under your breath as he hurries to get a clean rag for your hands

- he had been messing around with you that evening when he accidentally knocked you too hard and your hands shot out to steady yourself, smashing the glass you were holding against the table you braced yourself on

- very apologetic and drunk, Sean brings the attention of a sleepy Uncle, who grumbles as he makes his way over

- seeing the damage to your hands and the sheepish expression on the redhead’s face, Uncle starts to turn a bright pink shade of anger

- “Stupid boy! What did you do? Give me a look at that.”

- you politely suggest to Sean that he had better leave and he looks relieved to high-tail it

- Uncle sits you down and tells you about the times when he had a bottle smashed against him, or was thrown through/jumped through glass, so he has a surprising amount of knowledge

- after cleaning out the wounds on your palms and covering them with clean cloths, he ushers you straight to bed and makes sure to keep Sean away from you until he’s sobered up

Pearson

- you really, really wanted to learn how to cook

- robbery jobs and general mischief was low since the gang had only just set up in the new location, so you decided you would be helpful in other ways and at the same time get to spend all your moments with Pearson

- he was a bit begrudging over it, playfully suggesting you’ll get in his way, but he is surprisingly a good teacher if you’re a good listener

- you’re asked to bring over the pot of boiling water from the fire so he can add in the meat to it

- seems like a simple task, but the pot had been boiling for longer than either of you realised and even the handle was ragingly hot

- with a yelp, you yanked your now blistered hand away, shaking it frantically as if that might ease the burning sensation

- with an immense amount of concern, Pearson grasps your arm and pulls you to the table where a bucket of cold water sits, plunging your hand in and rubbing your back with his free hand

- “It’s okay, just focus on me, m’kay? Look at me.”

- when the burning subsides, he bandages the hand and keeps applying cold water to it as well as some ointment from one of the previous robberies

- he makes sure to gently kiss the hand every now and then

Kieran

- it was a nice day to test your new revolver

- you had decided to ride a small distance from camp to test your skills in your new weapon by shooting some bottles

- however, you had failed to realise that the weapon you had purchased was not brand new, and was instead a second-hand gun that the store owner had pawned off on you

- as a result, it wasn’t a steady or recently tested weapon

- when you pulled the trigger the first time, it hit the target, but slightly off centre

- with another shot, the gun recoiled hard and the metal at the rear seemed to come apart with an agonising burn to your palm

- the scent of burnt flesh and metal made you howl in pain and shock

- this startled your horse who, mistaking it for the cry of a predator, darted back to camp

- Kieran, naturally recognising your spooked horse and seeing no rider, calms the animal before going out in search of you, calling out with a shaky voice as his wide eyes search every tree, bush and boulder

- he finds you curled up against a tree trunk clutching your arm, whimpering

- Kieran himself makes a soft noise of pain to see you hurting and sits next to you, gently prying your other hand away from your injured one to inspect the damage

- although he very much wants to throw up at the sight of all the blood and burns on his lover, he steels himself because you need him

- Kieran puts you on his horse and rides like thunder into camp, presenting you like a broken bird with the most heartbroken expression on his face that he can’t help you because he doesn’t know where to start

- Strauss treats and binds your hand, letting Kieran lead you to his bed where he sits with you and kisses your shoulder in between sweet words, rocking you against his chest

- the next day he pulls Arthur aside and asks him as a favour to go find the gun trader and ‘deal with him’

Sean

- law was always going to be a problem when you were running with Dutch’s gang

- however, Sean certainly didn’t help that situation

- he has a habit of stirring up trouble with lawmen, even if he does nothing other than verbally taunt them

- sometimes he just doesn’t know where the line is

- usually you don’t mind, because you know he can slip away and you’ll always have his back, but this time he went too far

- the lawman decided he’d had enough of Sean’s smart mouth and pulled out his gun, yelling at the Irishman in colourful tones

- Sean had the sense to pull you out of the store you were browsing as you both took off, Sean but you scolding him

- in the crossfire - although you had managed to escape into the woods - a bullet had grazed your thigh and burned Sean’s shoulder

- “Oh shit, shit, shit! I’m so sorry darlin’, honey, let me see it! Dammit, shit, I can fix this!”

- he rants to himself as he makes you a makeshift little bandage, soothing your pain and occasionally kissing you

- he also kisses your thigh very very lightly over the bandage, giving you puppy eyes and swearing he’ll make it up to you

- although he won’t admit it, he’s much more reserved around lawmen (at least for a little while) afterwards, and he always makes sure that you are safe first

Trelawny

- due to his common disappearing act (which had lessened immensely since the two of you became an item) around camp, you and Josiah both took great pride in making time for one another to do different things

- one day it was boating down the river, the next it was saloon-hopping, the next was basking in a flower field

- he always has unique places to take you and the softest gleam in his eye

- this time, he insisted you go for a horse ride down the trail he found which would lead to a beautiful cliff overlooking the vast area

- your horse was brand new and still slightly skittish, having not had enough time to bond with you yet to develop a sense of trust

- regardless, you wanted to ride the mare next to Trelawny and his own steed

- it was a peaceful walk through the trees until your horse noticed the lithe form of a snake darting into the underbrush

- immediately, the mare reared up and kicked her legs, panicking, throwing you from the saddle before she bolted in the opposite direction

- it all seemed to happen in slow motion as you came crashing down to the dirt, audibly snapping something in your foot

- Josiah leapt from his horse and had pulled you close at an instant, inspecting you all over

- “Where does it hurt? Is this sore? Did you hit your head?”

- he’s like a mother hen fussing and protecting you, his hands expertly feeling for any breakages until he reaches your ankle and hears you cry out

- “Okay, it’s alright, dove. Just breathe, I’m going to take you home.”

- for the time that it takes you to learn how to walk with a makeshift crutch, he is always there shadowing you, making sure that if you look even a little bit unsteady that he is there to right you

- he makes sure you ride with him, too, until you gain your confidence back

Eagle Flies

- when the soldiers set up not too far from his tribe, Eagle Flies immediately became much more tense when you’d visit

- he would always love to grasp your hand and sit with his arms around you, but this was different

- he wasn’t blind to your beauty, and he knew the soldiers saw it too, since they frequently made passing comments in your presence when you’d walk by

- trying his absolute best to ignore it, he could still very much enjoy his time with you when you would visit, showing you all of the best spots for a good view, hunting, and contemplation

- one morning, Eagle Flies decided to leave early to find some of those flowers you always awe over

- when you arrived to find him missing, you decided to wander the local area since it seemed you were starting to become more familiar with the land thanks to Eagle Flies and his many trips with you

- however, you weren’t the only one roaming the forest

- three soldiers, all surprisingly tipsy despite it being morning, stumbled through the bushes and happened upon you

- both parties stared for a good few seconds - which felt like hours - until the shortest of the soldiers cracked a grin and made towards you

- his friends were quicker, grabbing your arms and attempting to subdue you, ripping your shirt in the process

- “If it ain’t the Indian-loving little bitch! Come here, sweetheart, come on!” the other two men took to whistling at you like a dog

- “I’ll show you how a real man fucks a-”

- there was no opportunity for the man to finish his vulgar statement likely due to the arrow protruding from his chest

- blood splutters from his mouth and the other two soldiers are on their backs before they could draw their weapons

- shaking from the shock, you barely register the familiar presence as Eagle Flies emerges from the shadows with his bow clutched tightly in hand

- he has a look of immense rage you’ve never seen before, his eyes ice cold as he surveys the bodies before deciding they’re dead

- when his gaze shifts to you, it softens at once to a look of concern and love

- “Are you okay? I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner. Come.” he speaks quietly, like a whisper to not startle the doe, and opens his arms

- you whimper and gratefully fall into his embrace

- back at the tribe, Eagle Flies sits you on his lap and whispers softly to you, watching the campfire after informing his father of the situation

- he makes sure from then on to always scope the land before your arrival, but soon a better idea emerges; you permanently stay with him on their native lands

- regardless, he’s much more protective of you and always has a warm comment to make you smile or a gentle touch to remind you he’s always there for you

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good-omens-classic · 5 years

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Hi Good Omens fans, ever since making this blog, and trawling through the archives for old art, I have been thinking again about trends from before the TV-show, and the way people draw Aziraphale and Crowley. I wanted to make this post addressing it but this is not “discourse” or to start a fight, in fact I would be perfectly content if all I did was make people think critically about what I am about to say and not even interact with this post at all, but I feel like I need to say it.

Talking about any racist undertones to the way people draw our two favorite boys usually makes people dig their heels in pretty fast. This is not a callout post for any artist in particular, this is not me trying to be overly critical of artists especially since they have more talent and skill than I do, and I’m going to address some common counterpoints that I frankly find unsatisfactory. Let’s just take a moment to set aside our defensiveness and think objectively about these trends. It took me a while to unlearn my dismissive attitude about these concerns so maybe I can help others get over that hurdle a little faster. Now let’s begin.

I’ve been kicking around the Good Omens fandom since maybe 2015 and for art based in book canon, whether it was made before the TV show came out, or because the artist is consciously drawing different, original designs, I’m going to estimate that a decent 75% of all fanart looks like this

Aziraphale is white and blonde and blue-eyed while Crowley is the typical “racially ambiguous” brown skin tone it’s become so popular to draw podcast characters as nowadays.

And the question is why? With the obvious answer being “it’s racist,” but let’s delve a little deeper than that.

A common thing I hear is that people get appearance headcanons fixed in their mind because the coverart of the book pictures the characters a certain way. My first point is this only shifts the question to why the illustrators drew them that way, when there aren’t many physical descriptions in the book. My second point is that while there definitely are cover arts that picture Aziraphale as cherubic, blonde, and white and Crowley as swarthy, dark-skinned, and racially ambiguous...

(side note: why is Crowley’s hand so tiny? what the hell is going on in this cover?)

It’s much more common for the covers to simplified, stylized, and without any particular unambiguous skin tones

I don’t know about the UK but the most popular version in the United States is the dual black and white matching covers

And while you could make an argument that the shading on Crowley’s face could suggest a darker skintone, it seems obvious to me that lacking any color these are not supposed to suggest any particular race for either of these two, and the contrasting colors are a stylistic choice to emphasize how they are on opposite sides. If anything, to me it suggests they are both white.

In short I simply do not buy the argument that people are drawing Aziraphale and Crowley this way because that’s how they were represented on the cover art of the book. If you draw them the way they are on the cover then whatever, I don’t care, but I don’t believe that’s what’s driving this trend.

The second thing people will say is that Good Omens is a work of satire, and it’s based in Christian mythology which has this trend of depicting angels as white, and it is embodying the trope of a “white, cherubic angel” paired with a dark-skinned demon for the explicit purpose of subverting the trope of “white angel is good, dark demon is bad” since Aziraphale is not an unambiguous hero and Crowley is not a villain. “It’s not actually like that because Crowley isn’t a bad demon, and Aziraphale isn’t actually a perfect angel” is the argument. This has a certain logic to it and allows some nuance to the topic, but to this I say:

Uncritically reproducing a trope, even in the context of a satire novel, is not enough to subvert it. Good Omens is not criticising the racist history of the church, and while the book does have some pointed jabs at white British culture (such as Madam Tracy conning gullible Brits with an unbelievably ignorant stereotype of a Native American) it is not being critical of the conception of angels as white and blonde or the literal demonization of non-white people. That’s just not what the book is about. So making the angel white and the demon dark-skinned, playing directly into harmful tropes and stereotypes, is not somehow subversive or counter-cultural when doing so doesn’t say anything about anything.

Please consider fully the ramifications of the conception of white and blonde people as innocent and cherubic and dark-skinned people as infernal and mischievous, especially in modern contexts...

Black people are more likely to be viewed as violent, angry, and dangerous. Priming with a dark-skinned face makes people more likely to mistake a tool for a gun. Black people are viewed as experiencing pain less intensely by medical professionals. Black men are viewed as physically larger and more imposing than they actually are. The subconscious racial bias favoring light skin is so ingrained it’s measurable by objective scientific studies, on top of the anecdotal evidence of things like news stories choosing flattering, “cherubic” pictures of white and blond criminals while using unflattering mugshots for non-white offenders.

This is why I say that if you’re going to invoke the “whites are angelic” trope, you better have a damn good subversion of it to justify it, because this idea causes real harm to real people in the real world. And Aziraphale being a bit of a bastard despite being an angel, I just don’t see that as sufficient. I am especially cautious of when it’s my fellow white fans that make this argument, not because I believe they do this out of any sort of malice or hatred of people with dark skin, but because I know first-hand it stems from a dismissiveness rooted in not wanting to think about it for too long because it makes us uncomfortable. Non-white people do not have the luxury of not thinking about it, because it’s part of their life.

Now the strongest textual evidence people use, in the absence of much real descriptor, is this:

"Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong; Heaven is not in England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort"

This piece of art has circulated in the fandom for so long I don’t know the original artist and it’s been used for everything from fancovers to perfume. This is where I found it and it’s one of the first things that come up when you google this quote about Aziraphale.

Doesn’t it just feel like this is the man that’s describing, some blonde effeminate gay man? Well guess what, there’s the “blonde as innocence” trope rearing its ugly head again, because the stereotype of gay men and effeminacy as being a white and blonde thing is--ding ding ding you guessed it--racism. And why would intelligent suggest a white and blonde person, except if the stereotype of a dark-skinned person is less intelligent?

Now the point of “people assume Aziraphale is British” is another sticking point people will often use, claiming that the stereotype of a British person is white and blonde. I guess this has some merit, since the British empire was one of the biggest forces behind white colonial expansion, and it seems disingenuous to assign “British” as “nonwhite” as soon as we’re being satirical, in the same way I found it distasteful that the TV show made God female when so many of the criticisms of the church are about its misogyny and lose their teeth as soon as God is no longer male.

However consider that 1.4 million Indian people live in the UK. I heard a man say aloud once that the concept of a black person having a British accent was a little funny, as though Doctor Who doesn’t exist and have black people on it. And I’m not overly familiar with the social landscape of the UK, but I understand they’re experiencing a xenophobia boom and non-white Brits aren’t considered “really British.” The stereotype of non-white people not being British only exists because of reinforcement in media. If you really want to be subversive, drawing Aziraphale as Indian goes way further than drawing him as white IMO.

Now let’s talk about Crowley. He is almost always drawn with a darker skin tone than Aziraphale, even when they are both white, and while I’ve outlined above how this is problematic on terms of linking light skin with innocence, I think it does have an extra layer. I think it also has to do with the exotification and fetishization of brown skin and non-white people.

This artist’s tumblr is gone now but their art is still on dA and while it’s definitely beautiful and well-done, I think this is a very good example of what I’m talking about.

Crowley and Aziraphale necessarily contrast each other, so describing Aziraphale as “British” might suggest that Crowley is “foreign-looking.” I also know *ahem* that the fandom generally thirsts over Crowley to hell and back, so making him a swarthy, tall dark and handsome is not necessarily surprising.

An interesting thing happened when the TV show came out, and everyone started drawing Michael Sheen!Aziraphale and David Tennant!Crowley more and more often: It’s not ubiquitous, but it does happen that sometimes artists will draw David Tennant’s skin darker than it actually is. The subconscious urge to see Crowley with dark skin is for some reason that strong for many people. And I really encourage people doing this to think about why. Not naming any names but I’ve working with fanartists before for collabs who I had to ask to lighten “bad guy” demon’s skin tones because it looked like they were making the skin darker on purpose to make them look scarier. This person is a perfectly pleasant person who tries not to be racist! And we both still fell into it accidentally, and it took me a while to notice and point it out, because the ingrained stigmatization of darker skin is pervasive yet often goes unnoticed.

What is the solution? I don’t know, and as a white person I’m not really qualified to make that call. Do we draw them both with the exact same skin tone? Is it better to make them both white? Should we make both of them non-white? Should we only make Aziraphale non-white? I am consciously aware of the fact that the Good Omens fandom is mostly white people, so most of the art we make is being both made by and consumed by white people, so I don’t feel comfortable saying “draw these characters of color specifically” because that can also veer into fetishization territory very quickly. This is not specific to good omens but I think we should pay attention to what fans of color say in all fandom spaces and weigh our choices even if they seem insignificant. And it’s important to realize that fans of color will not be a monolith in their opinion either, and it’s our responsibility to recognize that everyone can be affected by racism and social issues differently, the same way all women are affected by misogyny differently so just because one woman says such as such is misogynistic and another says it’s not. I’m sure there are non-white fans who think it’s perfectly fine to draw Aziraphale as white and Crowley as ambiguously non-white. I’m not saying they’re wrong. And I’m not saying you can’t reblog this kind of art, or that people who make or made it should feel bad about themselves. But so often this sort of thing goes unaddressed just because people don’t like thinking about it, and well, avoiding hard questions never really goes well I think.

#?#voice of mod #?????

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zalrb · 4 years

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I always love listening to your analysis. I just want add that I also feel like writing wise Shonda is often heavy on monologues in her shows. A lot of them are successful because like you said she had a knack for getting solid to good actors, but I often wonder whether or not said dialogue was earned, you know? Also she often talks about blackness only in the context of/proximity to whiteness which BOTHERS me. HTGAWM is better at this and honestly her best show so far IMO.

Thanks!

OK Shonda and Blackness … … where to even begin with that, this will mostly be focused on Scandal although on Grey’s (when I watched it anyway) I clocked a few things like the prevalence of interracial relationships and how Black love is usually framed as a second-choice/not a real choice.

The flashback when Cristina and Burke first meet at the Intern Mixer, the date he was talking to was a Black woman.

Jackson only dates Stephanie to try and get over April and he only views Stephanie as a viable option when he first sees her with her hair straight

Richard cheated on Adele with Ellis and considered Ellis the love of his life

But getting back to Scandal, there are a few things I take into account when I think about this, I acknowledge how difficult it was for her to get Scandal started, that this was a project she had always wanted to do and no one would go for it and the only reason they did is because GA turned out to be a monster hit so certain things that I side-eyed about Scandal, such as the fact that Olivia essentially didn’t interact with anyone Black in the beginning except for Harrison (and not really), I realize it’s because in the beginning, if she was “too Black” even with hits like Grey’s and decently performing shows like Private Practice under her belt, the network would be like “THAT’S TOO BLACK.”

But then Shonda said this thing, where it was something like Blackness showed up when Papa Pope showed up and I just read that, like, I mean did it? Because it goes back to what you said, Scandal only talks about Blackness in relation to whiteness so it’s not like Olivia starts having Black friends or the cast becomes Blacker or even more racially diverse and after a while, the “woke” monologues that characters would go on or even certain lines just felt entirely performative

(I��m supposed to take this seriously when it looks like Marcus dates exclusively white women?)

I do think in season 3 and maybe season 4, there were certain things that were organic to the characters and to the scenes. I appreciated this monologue because a) Eli would say something like this b) he’s reading Fitz to filth and he is absolutely right c) the undertones of class and race are done well here, Eli flips the script when he calls Fitz “boy” etc. and it works

same thing with when we actually meet Eli as Olivia’s father, this makes sense given the context

but then after that, things don’t really stay this organic because what’s being monologued or spoken about are not being explored – both Maya and Eli speak about how Olivia wants to cozy up to white people but she’ll never be white people or be accepted by white people

I forget which episode or scene it is but Eli does one of his monologues about Olivia turning to the white light or white hope or something and we all know what’s implied there but we never get into why – the most we can glean is that she has issues with Black men because of her father and Shonda used Edison as everything Olivia should want but doesn’t because it’s just good on paper

but considering that we never get into why Olivia has these complexes and they’re not rectified — the Lawn Chair episode does not suddenly reconcile these issues — the monologues Eli and Maya and eventually Marcus do just seem for show. I remember watching this

being like, … OK? What am I supposed to do with this when Olivia has no healthy or affectionate relationships with Black women? The one time we see her about to have a friendship with a Black woman, she becomes a sexual rival for Fitz

Eventually, she and Annalise had a bond but the episodes that really showcase that are actually the HTGAWM episodes and not the Scandal episodes and the thing with HTGAWM is that Shonda has an EP credit but she isn’t involved in the writing process and you can tell because there isn’t the Shonda staccato in the dialogue, lol

youtube

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amphtaminedreams · 4 years

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A/W 2020 Fashion Month: Before Vogue Went Blank (Part 2)

Hi to anyone reading,

I was going to start this post by jumping straight into Dion Lee and part 2 in general but there's been a lot going on the past couple of days-although this blog is primarily fashion, it wouldn’t feel right to start talking about designers without acknowledging all the shit that’s been going down.

^Photo Credit to @spiltcoco on Twitter

Yesterday, police footage came out of US police murdering yet another black man in broad daylight-George Floyd. He joins Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Alton Sterling, plus hundreds more named and god knows how many more unnamed African American citizens in the ever-growing list of victims of police brutality.

The majority of these are just people going about their daily lives, a majority of them doing absolutely nothing wrong; even those we know to have committed crimes have been unarmed and non-violent offenders. That being said, their offences are beside the point when we’ve seen the white perpetrators of mass shootings be calmly cuffed and escorted into the backs of police cars as if they were the ones selling cigarettes without permits. American police, given the amount of them that are armed, regularly become judge, jury and executioner trained for 8 weeks by an institution that originated from slave patrols. I cannot imagine how terrifying it is just to walk around as a PoC in America. I cannot imagine the collective trauma that has been suffered because of recent events on top of the intergenerational trauma that most likely exists because of centuries of oppression. I cannot imagine what it’s like to live in a country that was built to suppress you and was by law allowed to do so until very recently, those original structures still in place. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be made to feel like this is your fault. I mean, Boris Johnson is a useless, cold-hearted twat and I won’t defend him or this country for a minute (we have much blood on our own hands, and racial profiling is just as much a thing here as it is in America-I read earlier that you’re 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched in London as a non-white person compared to a white person), but I still can’t imagine him publicly advocating for the mass murder of groups he knows to be primarily made up of black people via Twitter. This whole situation is so unimaginably fucked up; anyone who still sees America as one of the world’s most developed nations needs to take a long, hard look at what is going on and reconsider that opinion.

Whilst we can’t fix everything, we can all speak up and make our voices heard, and it is our duty to do so. It’s not good enough to just “not be racist”, you have to be ANTI-racism, even if that means constantly reflecting on your own privilege and challenging your assumptions. Neutrality is complicity. Signing a petition isn’t going to change the world, but it’s a start:

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-jacob-frey-justice-for-george-floyd?recruiter=false&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_abi&recruited_by_id=7ba70000-a127-11ea-87fb-d1ff0bf6ea96

As I publish this, there’s less than 50,000 signatures needed to hit the target of 6,000,000 so if you happen to see it, get signing! There are lots of other petitions online but Change.org seems to be the only major one you can sign in the UK as the other are US based and require a zip code. I never thought I’d close a paragraph by quoting Macklemore but the line “no freedom 'til we're equal, damn right I support it” is at the forefront of my mind right now. Again, neutrality is complicity. We’re never going to achieve a fair society by sitting on our asses and hoping things will improve. Let’s all do the best we can.

Sorry if that intro wasn’t what you came here for, but I just think it’s so important to talk about. I know I’ve said in the past that fashion is supposed to be an escape from everyday life but there are some times when real life needs our attention and this is one of them. Feel free to unfollow if you disagree.

Anyway, onto the fashion. If this is the first post you’re reading, welcome! There’s a part 1! But I don’t wanna be pushy so start here if you wish!

If you read part 1, welcome back!

I ended that post by practically falling at the feet of Dilara Findikoglu, and I so wanted to start this post by regaining a sense of dignity and go straight into what-the-fuck-ing at Dior, but I know breaking chronological order would really piss off those “OmG I’m SoOo OCD, tHis BuzZfeEd aRtiCle WiTh DiFfereNt SiZed TiLes ToLd Me!” which is basically me minus claiming liking things to be organised means I have OCD-no, just dermatillomania and the denial that a compulsive skin picking disorder has anything to do with OCD because the neuroses club that is my brain doesn’t have any space left. SO, I have to continue where I left off and star the post with Dion Lee, whose collections I am a big fan of.

I could ramble a bit more but I did enough of that at the beginning of part 1 and am sure I’ll do more than enough in this post anyway, so here it is, Dion Lee:

Considering we ended with the maximalism of Dilara Findikoglu, sliding back over towards the other far end of the scale with a designer that tends to pitch their tent on the borders of the minimalism camp feels correct. Dion Lee, fortunately, seems the perfect collection to open with. There aren’t many other brands who do edge in such an understated and masterful way. If you want to be ready for combat and look like you’d fit right in at Vogue at the same time, look no further. This season’s collection is full of perfectly placed cut outs and immaculate tailoring and subtle street fighter-esque details as ever, and that’s why it pains me to say it:

Not that this is enough in the way of critique to restore my dignity by any means, it’s not a patch on last season.

I don’t think there was a single bad look in that show, and at times it felt like I was weeding through them here. When the looks were good, they were GOOD but a lot I found to be disappointing. Plus I have no idea why you’d put tie-dye in an A/W collection. I appreciate that it’s an Australian brand and that our winter is their summer, but they’re presenting to the rest of the world at fashion week and anyone in Paris, Milan, London and New York is going to be freezing their tits off and looking like a twat in an orange tie-dye sundress. There wasn’t much of a dip in quality for the menswear compared to last season, but honestly womenswear left a lot to be desired. That’s what happens when your expectations are high.

I used to think that if you assume the worst, it’s impossible to feel let down. And then I saw Dior’s A/W 2020 collection. Did a full 180 on that statement.

I suppose it’s a step up from haute couture, but then at least the styling in that was simple, and it just didn’t look like anybody had tried at all; here it’s clear Maria Grazia chucked everything she could at this collection, every headscarf, every gingham print, every shallow feminist undertone, and it was still a fucking mess. At first you think some of the individual pieces are cute but have just been ruined by the styling, and then you begin to look, and realise that even those individual pieces could’ve easily been bought in a New Look Boxing Day sale.

THIS IS CHRISTIAN DIOR, SUPPOSEDLY ONE OF THE MOST LUXURIOUS BRANDS OUT THERE. WHAT IS GOING ON!?

I don’t know, I included as many looks that I didn't mind as I could, but it’s like there always has to be a crappy, unnecessary detail in there. Everything is so literal. Of course the collection based around the divine feminine has the models dressed like basic ass Greek goddesses, so of course the collection based around the modern woman and equality has women walking the runway in ties and ill-fitting shoes too. Maria Grazia, here is a box:

Think outside of it.

Next is, thankfully, Elie Saab:

No, not exactly a trailblazer of a collection, but executed with poise and elegance as always. I mean, the styling is spot on. It looks like each part of the outfit was made for another, to contribute to a whole clearly envisioned look, similar to what we saw in the Alberta Ferretti show. Elie Saab is known for its haute couture shows where all the tiny details, the sequins and the silk and the embroidery come together to make something beautiful, and this is just that on a larger scale, with less “wow”s and more quiet admiration, more wishing you were the one wearing that outfit. If you’re gonna play safe, do it this well. The night dresses are stunning of course, but not even my favourite bit of the show. It’s the casual looks, the pussy bows and the ruffles and the neck scarfs and the private girls school monochrome colour palette with the occasional pop of red or purple, a toned down version of what we saw at haute couture, any of which deserve to be worn whilst eating macarons in front of the Eiffel Tower before trip to Musee D’Orsay. It’s Poppy Moore’s school uniform grown up and made fit for a fashion magazine editor:

Somehow managing to cram an Emma Roberts early 2010s fashion moment into every post is my talent, who knew. Wild Child was really a gem.

Erdem was a mixed bag:

With a lot of the outfits, I can’t tell if I actually like the garments that much or if I just like the look as a whole. I mean, without sounding too gluten-free Callie from the Valley, I like the VIBE, but there was a lot of outfits I almost included before I had to ask myself “LAUREN, do you ACTUALLY like this or do you just like the walking-into-your-sugar-daddy’s-will-reading-to-claim-his-fortune DRAMA of it all!?”

It happened a couple of times, where once I took off my black and white, theatrical violin accompanied entrance filtered sunglasses, I realised that the actual print was ugly. A collection so cohesively ornamental and kitschy is going to lean too far into that at times, and they were a few overly-fussy moments where it seemed less nudge nudge wink wink and more like Erdem Moralıoğlu fell into his grandma’s wardrobe, stole some fabric, and called it a day. I don’t want to sound like I’m not a fan of the collection because overall it’s gorgeous, I just thought it was a bit much at times.

Continuing with the theme of clever seasonal continuity that weaved its way throughout this year’s A/W offerings, Ermanno Scervino kept the core of his summer collection and made it just that little bit darker, added some weight to everything, and this is one of the rare occasions where I like the winter incarnation a lot more. I’m not huge about either but there’s a lot of things I’d love to wear here, the coats especially.

Up next is a reliable favourite of mine:

Etro.

Was it REALLY necessary for you to include ALL those coats I hear you ask?

Alaska Thunderfuck as Gia Gunn voice: Absolutelyyyy.

When it comes to bohemian fashion, Etro is unbeaten. Everything is always exquisitely coordinated and styled. Like I usually fucking hate aztec print but I love the way it’s done here. I’ve never known a brand to make belts seem like such an integral, tasteful part of the outfit in a field where they so often seem like a last minute addition for the sake of accessorising; it pains me to say it, but Elie Saab, I’m looking at you. It’s your only fault.

Yes for bringing back embroidered jeans! Yes for all those high necks! Yes for the tapestry print! Yes for the Afghan waistcoats! Etro will keep fedoras cool forever and I love them for that; I don’t know if she ever actually wore any of their stuff but I just know Stevie Nicks was in her prime would’ve ate this shit UP and she is my style icon for the ages. Plus, I might be way off base here but a lot of the collection seems to be inspired by traditional Romani style and it’s a beautiful direction to take things, a treasure trove of layers upon layers and rich textures and opulent prints.

I can’t wait til the phase of my phase of my life where I can swan around in maxi dresses and ponchos. I just hope those maxi dresses and ponchos are Etro.

Onto another brand which hasn’t had a bad show since I started my reviews: Fendi. This season, they took their late 60s/early 70s wild child aesthetic and gave a millionaire’s high maintenance wife spin on it, and what’s not to like about that?

I mean, Fendi is a brand which is always going to excel in its F/W presentations-the rich, bohemian prints (pro-tip: if you can’t already tell, me mentioning the word bohemian in a review pretty much guarantees I like the collection), the furs, and the warm colour palette all perfectly translate into clothes suited for walks through a city going through a post-summer burnout, where it rains red and orange leaves. You can tell Silvia Fendi is in her element when she’s got texture to play with, something that comes across in the gorgeous coats Fendi consistently puts out, and this season continues that trend. Plus, there’s a lot of adorable details here-shoes that show off the decorative socks underneath, the cube shaped bags and those furry ear muffs which I hope bring about a high street muff renaissance because they’re the equivalent of slipper socks for my ears and THEY’RE ACTUALLY REALLY PRACTICAL. The only thing I’m not in love with is the mirrored glasses, and I can’t help but think how replacing them with a pair of grandad style aviators would be the icing on the cake for the collection. Maybe I just need to see Miss Robyn Rihanna Fenty wearing them and then I’ll get on board. Usually works.

Ah, GCDS. I got so excited for it after last season but this time round, it was a bit of a disappointment. There were a few outfits that semi-matched up to how cutting-edge I saw their last collection, however a lot of the pieces looked pretty low quality. I get that streetwear is in the name, but it’s supposed to be a high fashion take on that, and a lot of the looks were quite pedestrian. Stand outs are the top 2 rows and the leather motocross style jumpsuit on the far right, third row down, but the quality of these pieces wasn’t consistent across the board and I feel like I ended up having to convince myself I liked some of the others just so I had enough photos to justify including the brand. It really sucks when I look back on how ahead of the game last season’s collection was-we’re talking outfits that wouldn’t be out of place on Instagram’s Tokyofashion page and as far as I’m concerned that’s the fashion holy grail. Some of these looks, especially the menswear, could be from a Boohoo TV ad and that makes me sad.

Meanwhile, Giambattista Valli put out a collection that looked like a virtual postcard of Parisian fashion; if a St-Germain-des-Prés streetwear themed Instagram doesn’t exist already, someone should capitalise on that, stat, because if my typical vision of French feminine fashion is correct it would be full of outfits like this. I feel like this is what a fashion novice EXPECTS Chanel to look like. Trust me-these days the reality is much more disappointing.

There’s many things I'm happy to see here besides the tulle and florals and prettiness I expect of the brand. Obviously the berets and the bows and the elbow length gloves are the kind of off-duty ballerina style touches I’ve become accustomed to but there are also some nice surprises here: the military style white jacket, the unexpected snake motif on clothing that’s otherwise overly delicate, and to my delight the return of the boater hat. IDGAF, this is the summer where I’m buying myself one off Ebay and making this happen for me whether they become a “thing” or not. I shouldn’t squander having this little of a double chin; the opportunity may never present itself again.

I haven’t watched Killing Eve in a longggg time since there’s only so much of two women attempting to kill each other and then miraculously avoiding death you can watch but I’d love to see Vilanelle prancing round a city in this kinda shit slitting some necks again. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like too much of a sadist; only in a purely fictional world is this something I want to see, I assure you.

Givenchy was really, really great this season too, imo. Definitely a step up from the last RTW anyway. Aside from the drama of the exaggerated floppy brim hats and the quirky tassle detail dresses a la Schiaparelli, a lot of these outfits kinda remind me of something a Miranda Priestly/Cruella De Vil type would wear, and you know me; I’m all for that kind of intimidating, about-to-either-slap-you-or-fire-your-ass bad bitch energy. The gathered leather gloves with the androgynous subtly checkered power suits feels CORRECT and if Giambattista Valli is the bottom in this relationship, Givenchy is the top. Am I allowed to reinforce sapphic relationship stereotypes as a bi girl? Probably not. I’m sorry. Won’t do it again. Just this once. And you know I’m right really xoxo

And OMFG Gucci. Another impeccable collection for me, honestly. Once again, it’s probably my favourite of the season. How it is that Alessandro Michelle gets it SO right for me despite his vision being so bold and different every time? He has this specific brand of strange, conceptual beauty which blends past and present trends in a way so supreme it should be considered art. It’s not a term to throw around loosely but the man is a genius, and tbh I’m still not over the human head props from the 2018 F/W winter show.

In my Haute Couture week review, I talked about the Viktor and Rolf collection (which I loved, don’t get me wrong!) and said that pretty meets grunge is my fave thing ever-this is that, but much even more substantial and intelligent. The Wes Anderson-esque pieces or that late 60s/early 70s hipster aesthetic that I loved in last season’s show hasn’t been done away with either-be it the level of detail or the colour scheme, it all somehow fits together. Never did I think I’d see dresses fit for porcelain dolls through the lens of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen seamlessly slotted in between outfits that could’ve been put together from the clothing rack of Dazed and Confused’s costume department. I want it all-opulent fur-trimmed coats, crucifix jewellery and pilgrim hats I’m sure both Edgar Allan Poe and modern goths would approve of, and the tiered skirts that wouldn’t be out of place in a Westworld saloon. The models were delightfully sad and almost creepy looking and I wouldn’t change that for the world. To say 10/10 doesn’t do it justice, so I’m gonna have to open a reviewer’s can of worms and say 100/100.

Gucci is a tough act to follow, and I’m sorry it has to fall onto the shoulders of Halpern. In the nicest possible way (as if there is any nice way of saying it), I don’t think I any expected anything but a downgrade, so if anything, my standards will be lower so...Michael Halpern, you can thank me I guess?

That was really mean, I’m sorry. It’s not a bad collection, and I definitely like it more than last season’s. It’s a slightly garish colour palette at times but an exciting one in spite of that, which when paired with the animal print dotted throughout makes this collection the perfect fit for a tropical beach party or at the very least, a semi-decent night at the Caribbean themed bar in your local town centre. The sequins and silk, a Halpern trademark, are as tastefully done as ever, and seeing them on the models, I can’t deny these are some power fits-the kind of clothes you are bound to look and feel confident in; if you wanted to play queen of the urban jungle for a night, this is what you need to be wearing.

Ah, Hermes.

Generally not one to stoke a fire inside me. In all fairness, the tailoring here is really, really nice and French biker chic, and the pieces are perfectly crafted-it’s not that I don’t like the outfits because I think that if I saw one of them individually in a natural, messier setting I’d probably be impressed. These are classy, elegant winter looks and what more could you want when you’re looking for outfit inspiration for this season? It’s just that it’s always a little too neat and uniform for me, and on the runway I like my fashion to be risky. This could almost be the sophisticated mother to a Tommy Hilfiger collection and whilst that’s something I would probably wear if I wanted to look put together, it’s not what you get excited to see at fashion week. Primary colours all together aren’t where it’s at for me either, the infamous colour scheme of the cheap plastic playhouses you’d find in the garden of every working/middle class British household back in the day. Yes, I had one. So did the after school club I was forced to attend whilst my mum was at work. Apparently the negative connotations are still too much for me (a boy I went to the after school club with did once fall off the back of one and crack his head open so maybe it’s justified).

Isabel Marant was pretty much exactly what you’d expect from Isabel Marant; if the Etro bohemian woman is one who rolls out of bed and chucks on the first thing she sees, the Isabel Marant bohemian woman is the one who claims she’s done the same thing but who actually planned it all out the night before. She designs for the gluten-free, bikram yoga Kourtney Kardashian style “hippy” who claims to be a free-spirit but would definitely not do acid with you. I was gonna say it was a collection for the Gwyneth Paltrows of the world but then I remembered Gwyneth proudly released a candle she claimed smelled like her vagina and changed my mind-she’d definitely do acid with you.

It’s definitely a cohesive transition from the summer collection; both have that seemingly laid-back, clean-cut vibe, and cater to the rich, impeccably groomed scented candle loving woman everywhere. Obviously the pieces are a tad more suited to an alpine lodge in Switzerland than a beach in Malibu this time round, but that same mild colour palette, pretty, naturalistic patterns, and generally relaxed fit persists. It’s cute enough.

J.W Anderson is a bit of an enigma.

Despite the experimental silhouettes and the kooky details that you think would very “look at me!”, the collections still seem to have a chilled, easy-going feel to them. They toy about with the strange but remain entirely sophisticated whilst doing so-I think it’s because aside from the little quirks that make the garments J.W Anderson, they’re otherwise fairly reserved and simple; even the quirks themselves mostly tend to be exaggerated, more conceptual takes on more typical stylistic motifs anyway. Anderson has a knack for producing statement pieces that don’t look like they’re trying too hard to be statement pieces, a talent he expertly deploys at Loewe as well. Whilst Maison Margiela collections are like the fashion equivalent of that Jughead “I’m weird, I’m a weirdo” speech, J.W Anderson’s refusal to conform is quiet and modest. I like it. It’s not generally my personal style but I can admire the thought behind the work, and there are still some things I’d love to try. I have a few standouts-the shoes with the hoop detailing dancing from the ankle straps, the dress on the bottom right with what appears to be art nouveau typography on, the trench coat with the cape detailing and the gossamer dress to its right are all stunning, especially that dress. If I ever want to dress as the bubble Glinda the Good Witch descends in when she meets Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I know where to go, though I don’t suppose there’s going to be an occasion that calls for that any time soon. Can I just have the dress anyway?

Kim Shui is another new designer I found through blessed Twitter screencaps-thanks guys for doing my research for me. Much appreciated.

But anyways! Like Charlotte Knowles, it’s clear she’s still establishing her aesthetic as a designer, and thus far I love it. The whimsical, throwback prints on urban silhouettes that range from the androgynous suits of city dwelling cool girls to the amped-up sex appeal of nightclub dresses is gorgeous, especially twinned with dainty headscarfs and opera gloves-all in all I think this a very cool and wearable collection and I’m looking forward to the next collection she puts out.

Next up is Lacoste, and IDK why I always include their collections to be honest, considering they’re not really known for “high fashion”. I guess it’s because my dad has collected Lacoste shirts since I was little so I kinda have a soft spot for it and feel obligated to include it every time presentation season comes around. Yes, the outfits are unbearably preppy and the colours are garish but I feel like that’s kind of the appeal? So what if some of the tracksuits look like they could’ve been pulled out of a bad mafia movie? I see the argyle jumpers, with a bit of wear and tear, as a charity shop gem my sister would come across (she has the #Y2K Depop girl knack for finding old designer pieces in the shittiest charity shops without the audacity to try and sell them at a 70% markup) that I would then steal from her wardrobe to wear myself, contrasted with a ripped mini skirt, chains and and docs. I see the POTENTIAL of a look that is very fuck you to the rich middle age tory styling we see here. It’s punk, okay?

Lanvin was STUNNING this time around. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching Mad Men recently and it reminds me of the fashion on that-which I hope somebody won an award for at the time BTW, it is SO fucking good-but I just adore every look here. I can’t even remember if I reviewed Lanvin’s SS20 show, and so clearly if I did it wasn’t that memorable (no shade intended), however this collection is a different story. Every single one of these outfits is iconic movie moment worthy, a 60s Cher Horowitz plaid two piece equivalent that would get screencapped and replicated ad-nauseam, all the best looks of Betty Draper and Peggy Olsen and Joan Holloway and Megan Calvet brought together and refined for the modern day woman. I might even consider sacrificing my anti-royalist principles if it meant I could transport myself back in time and switch bodies with Grace Kelly so I could make this collection my princess-off-duty wardrobe and drive around Monaco in that Bella Hadid look, roof down, all the drama of the fur trim and the gloves and hair whipping about in the wind (but in this unrealistic vision I can actually see what I’m doing and I’m not choking on random strands and swearing at Mother Nature as if she is a real entity with a personal vendetta against me).

Loewe! More J.W Anderson! I’m gonna try not to repeat myself by arsekissing too much all over again and get the good points out of the way quickly! So rapid fire: elegant! Delicious colour palette! Interesting shapes! I think I’m seeing a Victorian/Edwardian influence there! Correct me if I’m wrong! I like it! The coats are strong! Remind me of the suffragettes! But lets pretend in this case these Loewe style coat wearing suffragettes are not raging classists!

AH. Apart from that, it was a bit too austere for me. I definitely preferred Anderson’s eponymous collection; there were a fair few recurring details in this show that I couldn’t get behind that I didn’t include, in particular this bib-like black panel that just kept popping up on everything. Sorry J.W Anderson. But a 50% success rate is still good! And at the end of the day, having 2 collections on Vogue Runway at once is more prestigious than the accumulative total of every accomplishment I’ll probably ever have achieved in my life by the time I’m on my deathbed so what do I know anyway? Sigh:( At least I’ll always have the honour of having the largest head by circumference of my class in year 4, right *sweats nervously*!?!?!

Louis Vuitton was definitely a downgrade on last season for me. There were for sure elements I liked-the Vera Wang-esuqe mixing of the tulle bustle skirts with the rougher, more masculine biker inspired vests and jackets was a cool choice, reminiscent of Gucci’s mixing of the lace dresses with harnesses. I enjoyed the baroque jackets and subtle nods to steampunk style too. Though we’ve already seen it a lot this season, the wet look coat with fur trim I can’t help falling in love with, and I’m immune to the potential ugliness of the muted blue monotone look purely on the basis I can picture Ripley from Alien in it. So like I said-it’s not as if I hated it. I guess when it comes down to it, the collection wasn’t bad so much as I just had higher hopes. I will say though, the staging was INCREDIBLE. As a history nerd, I never thought I’d see the day when a Henry the 8th lookalike actor was part of the backdrop of a Paris fashion week show-and I always thought there was no interesting career path for me in the subject!

And another big name I don’t tend to be so partial to, Maison Margiela. IDK, I did like last season but I wasn’t a fan of haute couture and it took me a while to warm to this. Call it deconstructed, experimental, whatever, but you know when you can’t decide what to wear and you’re in a rush so you kinda just throw all the shit you decided against into a pile? Well, my initial thought was that this season Margiela is kinda that, on the runway.

I will say, once I let go of my need to see a clear shape, a lot of the individual pieces were stunning (NOT the puffed up tabis though, I still can’t even get behind the regular ones). I guess I just wish they’d go for less is more with the styling because as it currently stands, it makes it hard to actually take the clothes in.

Ultimately, one thing you can always say about Margiela, like their clothes or not, is that it has a monopoly on being effortlessly bold.

Marc Jacobs I really liked again, though I will say it doesn’t stand out quite like the S/S collection did. That was absolutely STUNNING-I can’t remember specifically where I ranked it in my top ten but I know it was at least in the top 5. This, on the other hand, is...pretty. It’s very pretty, and very put together, so I’m not saying at all that I don’t rate it. I suppose it’s just a lot simpler than I expected it to be-I don’t have a problem with simplicity, at all, especially if it’s what a brand is known for but I feel like part of the appeal with Marc Jacobs is that it’s pretty kooky. I mean, not Thom Browne or Margiela kooky, but commercial kooky at least. I feel like the kookiness is lacking here? And that’s where this feeling is coming from? And also, the fact that Lanvin tackled the same era and did it a lot better? So there’s that, too. Plus, I adore Miley Cyrus but...why? Random celebrities waking the runway just doesn’t do it for me-it always comes across as a publicity grab, as if the designer isn’t confident enough in their collection’s ability to get people talking on its own, and I suppose in this case that says it all really.

Margaret Howell was...well, Margaret Howell. She’s known for her basics, and they’re always pretty non-offensive “regulation hottie” in the words of the icon that is Damian from Mean Girls. It’s been, what, four years? More? Since I last watched that film but I’m pretty sure watching it about twenty times between the ages of 9 and 15 tattooed it on my brain. I include her because even though they don’t get my pulse racing, I like these pieces; considering the fact that expecting straight white men to ever have style on the level of barbiedrugz (his instagram is my favourite thing ever) or Rickey Thompson is ludicrous, Margaret Howell’s menswear looks are probably are the best, realistic goal for any future partner. Because I like my men dressed like Paddington bear/a depressed Brown University English lit lecturer, okay? Or in other words, Will Graham from Hannibal.

Marine Serre had a few good moments-the looks that I liked were the ones that stayed within her lane of blending the weird with the visually appealing. There were a lot of cool things going on, and I like the utility vibe (the boot with the pouch detailing and the mask are perfect examples of this done well), but outside the fits I picked out a lot of it went over my head tbh.

Marques Almeida is a show I was looking forward to-it has such a youthful, experimental quality to its collections (it’s no surprise the designers said they were influenced by the HBO show Euphoria this year!), similar to Central Saint Martins, and you can tell the designers (Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida) are based in London too; we are talking about the birthplace of the punk fashion movement, and as a designer it’s probably almost a rite of passage that you incorporate elements of that into your work. Marques Almeida does that with a flair and consistency you can count on. Their clothes don’t have the wildest silhouettes or anything like that but the fun they have playing around with print and colour and the ease and confidence with which they settle on those combinations always comes through-the black and white coat with the yellow furs trim is one of my favourite pieces from the entirety of this season’s offerings.

I wasn’t so fond of Max Mara’s SS20 collection and I'm not gonna lie, this isn’t THAT much of a step up for me personally. It’s just one of those brands I feel obligated to include because it’s talked about quite a bit but I’m not totally sure if it’s for me. Too monotone, but I’ll give it another season! And I mean, there is a slight improvement here-this collection is a lot more laid back than the stiff, austere feel of the last, and there are some very well fitted and structured pieces. A lot of the looks kinda remind me of a 2020, fashion take on The Breakfast Club’s “Basket Case”, which is kinda cool, and just from looking at the clothes, the high price tag is palpable. Also, scruffy hair club unite! Though obviously it’s intentional here! That’ll be my excuse for the next time I turn up at work looking like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards-Max Mara made me do it.

Ending on those words of wisdom, I’m gonna bring this post to a close, because I can’t fit any more photos in! I’m desperately hoping that I can fit this all into 3 parts like I did with my last RTW review but even if I do have to make 4 posts, I still include my top 10 shows as I did before. I hope to get that post up within the next couple of weeks! After that, I’ve shot a Lana Del Rey inspired by each of her different albums and “era”s though given last week’s events I’m on the fence about whether to post it or not, especially given her silence over the last couple of days. I’m really proud of what I’ve put together and I’ll always love her art and music (I have 2 bloody tattoos, for fuck’s sake!), so I’m trying to think how I can reconcile that with those awfully worded posts and just the general lack of awareness of bigger issues that she’s displayed the last week. JFC, being a Lana stan has always been so chilled up until now. All the very valid and important takes aside, that “Lana pls delete that post and apologise, we can’t fight the barbz all your stans are depressed” tweet is the only good thing to come out of this shitshow. He got a point. Breathing feels like effort lately:( IDK, if you’re also a Lana stan and you have any opinions on the matter, feel free to DM me, because I’m feeling pretty conflicted rn.

Most importantly though, are the issues I opened this post by talking about, and I thought I’d finish by including the thread of petitions I saw on Twitter. Like I said, a lot of them aren’t available to sign in the UK but to anyone who read up until this point (thank you!) idk where you’re reading from so maybe some of them will apply to you:

https://twitter.com/yericvIt/status/1265801832930045953

Also, while we’re at it, because every tory voting twat seems to treat our country as if it’s some beacon of hope where racism is non-existent and love to tell PoC to stop moaning about their experiences, here’s a thread of black British men and women who have lost their lives to police violence:

https://twitter.com/illh0eminati/status/1266441604170223617

Thank you for reading until the end. I hope that you enjoyed the fashion part of the post but also that if you did read this far, you read the other bits too if you didn’t know what was going on already. It seems like everyone does but you forget that Twitter’s a bit of an echo chamber and that outside of it, there’s a lot of ignorance, whether intentional or not. I know Tumblr has a similar audience to Twitter so I imagine there’s loads on here about everything going on too, but ya know. I wanted to talk about it just incase.

Stay safe, keep fighting the good fight, and again, thank you for reading!<3

Lauren x

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hamliet · 5 years

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(1) Wow, I didn’t expect you to reply so quickly. Thanks!

(2) Hmmm…I see your points. Still, I’m flashbacking to Daenerys’ first meeting with Jon, during which she basically said she deserves the throne because she’s suffered. If she had said that in the context of her not wanting anyone else to be oppressed like she had been, hence her campaign to end slavery, then it would have been touching and inspiring.

(3) Instead, at that moment at least, she acted as if people like Sansa and Cersei didn’t suffer something similar to get where they are now. Or that Missandei and Grey Worm also suffered before she arrived (though the “white savior” undertones are problematic). Or that countless other nameless people suffered without ever getting the chance to seize power for themselves.

(4) I hope I don’t sound as if I’m demeaning what any of these characters have gone through, because no one should go through that.

(5) I also blame the writers for losing touch with Daenerys’ character. Somehow, Daenerys no longer feels like the same woman who let liberated Unsullied soldiers elect their new captain, expressed concern over the demeaning nature of their vermin-themed names, and respected Grey Worm’s decision to reclaim what was initially supposed to be a debasing name into one he took pride in.

You’re welcome! Thanks for being polite, and for sending asks! These are fun.

So, I think that conversation you reference--the “faith in myself” speech--does seem awkward, but my interpretation (yours may differ), it isn’t really if you look at what she’s saying in its context within the story, instead of our context as an audience where we’re privy to the character of Jon Snow. (I do think the show could have, idk, emphasized this more.) She, however, does not know Jon at all. She has been, as she said, sold, raped, defiled. She has had all kinds of men demean her and her worth, but she refused to let them define her. She believed in something better for herself, which to me is inspirational. When Jon arrives, she is not given a reason to think he would be different. I mean, men in power, to her, have seldom been anything by condescending and dangerous to her, so when he refuses to bend the knee despite arriving under that (reasonable) impression (and I don’t think Jon should’ve bent the knee at all lol so I am not blaming Jon, merely explaining different perspectives), she is pissed. Yeah, she does have a temper that she needs to, well, temper (heh). She had no reason to see Jon as someone different, until he demonstrates he is--and she demonstrates she is, by risking everything to save him because she trusts him.

I’m not sure what you mean by “that moment,” sorry! I’m going to guess it’s the speech? I’d say then she didn’t know Sansa then or Cersei; only that Cersei had just murdered a bunch of innocents in a sept in King’s Landing, and Missandei and Grey Worm--I’d actually have disliked if she described herself liberating them from their suffering because she’d be using them as props to make herself seem good, and respect that she didn’t invoke them and Davos and Jon asked Missandei for her story herself. The point when Dany freed them, which Missandei emphasized as well, is that people can choose their destiny. Dany’s worked for hers.

I disagree that she doesn’t seem like the same character--she does to me--well mostly. There are those laughably bad out of character stupid moments like forgetting the Iron Fleet (D&D: really?). I think empathy, conviction, and a fiery personality are all parts of Dany, huge parts. It can be argued that she knows what it’s like to be sold (though importantly not with the racial elements) so her freeing people is born from empathy. I def agree with you, however, that the white savior stuff is a massive problem and I get why that would turn people off to the character though.

Ambition, however, isn’t a bad thing. Sansa’s ambitious and honestly good for her; I do think she should insist on Northern Independence because she promised her people that. Men who believe they can save the world usually do in fiction; for women it’s usually a cautionary tale. If Dany’s turns out to be the latter I’ll be really disappointed.

Jon and Dany are marked opposites in certain ways; it’s a common Jungian trope in fiction to have love interests be anima (traditionally feminine qualities) and animus (traditionally masculine). That doesn’t mean scientifically or even sociologically what we think of when it comes to gender/masculine/feminine, but rather that it identifies patterns in literary love stories in terms of the characters used. Jon’s passivity is a telltale feminine trait (using that def of feminine!) and Dany’s ambition and temper are telltale masculine ones. I for one find it really refreshing--I love it when these roles are reversed. I think @argentvive has spoken about this as well in terms of how Jungian principles tie in with alchemy in literature as well, wherein Dany is more aligned with a role usually given to male characters, and Jon to female, but I could be wrong.

Again, this is all just my opinion, and I’m fine with people disagreeing! No one needs a reason to like or dislike a character, or favor one or another. I personally prefer Sansa as a character (I’m so sad people put them against each other, and the writers too! AUs till I die). But I love Dany too. I will also add that I am very sensitive to Daenerys negativity right now--not that this is negative (you’ve been great! it’s a fun discussion), but to other asks I’ve been getting. The facts are that the show might be completely ruining her character, and if they do that it’ll be a very painful blow, because it’ll effectively ruin all three of my favorites: Dany, Jon, and Sansa (my very fave), the latter two for their roles in her demise, and I’d be devastated. I’ll be in a better place to discuss this after Sunday if it turns out well as I am still tentatively optimistic it will, fingers crossed!

#ask hamliet #daenerys targaryen #jonerys #got #game of thrones #got meta #jon snow #jonerys meta #Anonymous

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the-end-of-art · 6 years

Text

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he must choose

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926) by Langston Hughes

One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet," meaning, I believe, "I want to write like a white poet"; meaning subconsciously, "I would like to be a white poet"; meaning behind that, "I would like to be white." And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America--this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

But let us look at the immediate background of this young poet. His family is of what I suppose one would call the Negro middle class: people who are by no means rich yet never uncomfortable nor hungry--smug, contented, respectable folk, members of the Baptist church. The father goes to work every morning. He is a chief steward at a large white club. The mother sometimes does fancy sewing or supervises parties for the rich families of the town. The children go to a mixed school. In the home they read white papers and magazines. And the mother often says "Don't be like niggers" when the children are bad. A frequent phrase from the father is, "Look how well a white man does things." And so the word white comes to be unconsciously a symbol of all virtues. It holds for the children beauty, morality, and money. The whisper of "I want to be white" runs silently through their minds. This young poet's home is, I believe, a fairly typical home of the colored middle class. One sees immediately how difficult it would be for an artist born in such a home to interest himself in interpreting the beauty of his own people. He is never taught to see that beauty. He is taught rather not to see it, or if he does, to be ashamed of it when it is not according to Caucasian patterns.

For racial culture the home of a self-styled "high-class" Negro has nothing better to offer. Instead there will perhaps be more aping of things white than in a less cultured or less wealthy home. The father is perhaps a doctor, lawyer, landowner, or politician. The mother may be a social worker, or a teacher, or she may do nothing and have a maid. Father is often dark but he has usually married the lightest woman he could find. The family attend a fashionable church where few really colored faces are to be found. And they themselves draw a color line. In the North they go to white theaters and white movies. And in the South they have at least two cars and house "like white folks." Nordic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art (if any), and an Episcopal heaven. A very high mountain indeed for the would-be racial artist to climb in order to discover himself and his people.

But then there are the low-down folks, the so-called common element, and they are the majority---may the Lord be praised! The people who have their hip of gin on Saturday nights and are not too important to themselves or the community, or too well fed, or too learned to watch the lazy world go round. They live on Seventh Street in Washington or State Street in Chicago and they do not particularly care whether they are like white folks or anybody else. Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy. Their religion soars to a shout. Work maybe a little today, rest a little tomorrow. Play awhile. Sing awhile. O, let's dance! These common people are not afraid of spirituals, as for a long time their more intellectual brethren were, and jazz is their child. They furnish a wealth of colorful, distinctive material for any artist because they still hold their own individuality in the face of American standardizations. And perhaps these common people will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be himself. Whereas the better-class Negro would tell the artist what to do, the people at least let him alone when he does appear. And they are not ashamed of him--if they know he exists at all. And they accept what beauty is their own without question.

Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art. Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their "white" culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work. And when he chooses to touch on the relations between Negroes and whites in this country, with their innumerable overtones and undertones surely, and especially for literature and the drama, there is an inexhaustible supply of themes at hand. To these the Negro artist can give his racial individuality, his heritage of rhythm and warmth, and his incongruous humor that so often, as in the Blues, becomes ironic laughter mixed with tears. But let us look again at the mountain.

A prominent Negro clubwoman in Philadelphia paid eleven dollars to hear Raquel Meller sing Andalusian popular songs. But she told me a few weeks before she would not think of going to hear "that woman," Clara Smith, a great black artist, sing Negro folksongs. And many an upper-class Negro church, even now, would not dream of employing a spiritual in its services. The drab melodies in white folks' hymnbooks are much to be preferred. "We want to worship the Lord correctly and quietly. We don't believe in 'shouting.' Let's be dull like the Nordics," they say, in effect.

The road for the serious black artist, then, who would produce a racial art is most certainly rocky and the mountain is high. Until recently he received almost no encouragement for his work from either white or colored people. The fine novels of Chesnutt' go out of print with neither race noticing their passing. The quaint charm and humor of Dunbar's' dialect verse brought to him, in his day, largely the same kind of encouragement one would give a sideshow freak (A colored man writing poetry! How odd!) or a clown (How amusing!).

The present vogue in things Negro, although it may do as much harm as good for the budding artist, has at least done this: it has brought him forcibly to the attention of his own people among whom for so long, unless the other race had noticed him beforehand, he was a prophet with little honor.

The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites. "Oh, be respectable, write about nice people, show how good we are," say the Negroes. "Be stereotyped, don't go too far, don't shatter our illusions about you, don't amuse us too seriously. We will pay you," say the whites. Both would have told Jean Toomer not to write Cane. The colored people did not praise it. The white people did not buy it. Most of the colored people who did read Cane hate it. They are afraid of it. Although the critics gave it good reviews the public remained indifferent. Yet (excepting the work of Du Bois) Cane contains the finest prose written by a Negro in America. And like the singing of Robeson, it is truly racial.

But in spite of the Nordicized Negro intelligentsia and the desires of some white editors we have an honest American Negro literature already with us. Now I await the rise of the Negro theater. Our folk music, having achieved world-wide fame, offers itself to the genius of the great individual American composer who is to come. And within the next decade I expect to see the work of a growing school of colored artists who paint and model the beauty of dark faces and create with new technique the expressions of their own soul-world. And the Negro dancers who will dance like flame and the singers who will continue to carry our songs to all who listen-they will be with us in even greater numbers tomorrow.

Most of my own poems are racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know. In many of them I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz. I am as sincere as I know how to be in these poems and yet after every reading I answer questions like these from my own people: Do you think Negroes should always write about Negroes? I wish you wouldn't read some of your poems to white folks. How do you find anything interesting in a place like a cabaret? Why do you write about black people? You aren't black. What makes you do so many jazz poems?

But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul--the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile. Yet the Philadelphia clubwoman is ashamed to say that her race created it and she does not like me to write about it, The old subconscious "white is best" runs through her mind. Years of study under white teachers, a lifetime of white books, pictures, and papers, and white manners, morals, and Puritan standards made her dislike the spirituals. And now she turns up her nose at jazz and all its manifestations--likewise almost everything else distinctly racial. She doesn't care for the Winold Reiss' portraits of Negroes because they are "too Negro." She does not want a true picture of herself from anybody. She wants the artist to flatter her, to make the white world believe that all negroes are as smug and as near white in soul as she wants to be. But, to my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering "I want to be white," hidden in the aspirations of his people, to "Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro--and beautiful"?

So I am ashamed for the black poet who says, "I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet," as though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world. I am ashamed, too, for the colored artist who runs from the painting of Negro faces to the painting of sunsets after the manner of the academicians because he fears the strange unwhiteness of his own features. An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he must choose.

Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing the Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand. Let Paul Robeson singing "Water Boy," and Rudolph Fisher writing about the streets of Harlem, and Jean Toomer holding the heart of Georgia in his hands, and Aaron Douglas's drawing strange black fantasies cause the smug Negro middle class to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to catch a glimmer of their own beauty. We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

#Langston Hughes #poem #poet #poetry

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profgandalf · 4 years

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My Personal Despair Over the Loss of Dr. Seuss’ "And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street"

Twenty-five years ago when we moved to Mount Vernon, OH, I noticed with pleasure that the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County was located at 201 N Mulberry St, Mt Vernon, OH 43050--Mulberry Street!

And do you know why I was pleased about that? Because "And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street" was one of my favorite books by Theodor Seuss "Ted" Geisel. . .Dr. Seuss.And do you know why? Because Marco, the dreamy narrator of the book, was me.

The boy whose father was always talking to him about keeping his eyes up and not dreaming about sounded a lot like my dad. And I was constantly day-dreaming. My mother tells the story of me failing an exam and questioning me about how I could have failed after we had studied the material so thoroughly. "Oh," I said, "There was a question about farms, and I started thinking about Grandpa Rearick's farm, and the next thing I knew the time for the test was over.

For those who do not know the plot of Seuss' classic story, a boy is in the habit of being cross-examined by his father on what he had seen:

“Marco, keep your eyelids up

And see what you can see.”

But when I tell him where I've been

And what I think I've seen,

He looks at me and sternly says,

“Your eyesight's much too keen.”

“Stop telling such outlandish tales.

Stop turning minnows into whales.”

However, as Marco walks home from school. he notes with disappointment that the only thing to see "Was a horse and a wagon on Mulberry Street." And since that would never do for a story, the boy begins to weave all sorts of exotic and amazing things with each page changing something with each page such as the horse becoming a Zebra. He is the unfettered imagination of a child set out on a page.

By the time he arrives home, he has composed the description of a whole parade with bands, animals and police, the mayor and such. But when he faces his father he "chickens out" and admits that all he saw was a horse and wagon on Mulberry Street.

The whole experience, the utter misunderstanding of the adult mind of a child's imagination felt by so many of us who were gifted with imaginations is a central part of Seuss narratives."If I Ran the Circus" and "If I Ran the Zoo" both featured a dreamy narrator who looked at an empty lot or a normal circus and began to IMAGINE what he might have if he were in charge.And now these classics are lost.

You cannot get them from either of the major online book-sellers for under 800 dollars because Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia decided "to no longer tie "Read Across America Day" with Dr. Seuss, whose birthday was previously marked by the annual event. Their statement goes as follows: “Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss,” the district said." I am rolling my eyes.

(The school district is now trying to step away from the idea that they "banned Seuss" and claim they only wished to disconnect themselves. Nice try, but I am not buying that) And in response, Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that "Six Dr. Seuss books — including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery"

You know what the offensive image was in Mulberry Street? Nearly at the end, Marco says. . .

"Suppose that I add. . .

A Chinaman who eats with sticks. . .

A big Magician doing tricks. .

A ten-foot beard that needs a comb. . .

No time for more,

I'm almost home.

And there at the bottom of the page is a Chinese fellow in the midst, running along with the parade eating a bowl of rice with chopsticks. As one Twitter comment said, "Don't Chinese people still eat with sticks?"

“It's a private business I hear some say, they can do what they want.”

Can they? Can they? Seuss is a national treasure. Both Trump and Obama read from his books on this day.

But Yes, I suppose they can But they have robbed my grandchildren of a glorious journey into the imagination Will the Oz books follow or what about Mary Poppins? Have you read some of the sequels?

And when I think of what contemporary culture has offered up instead, my disgust with them and the wokeness which inspired them is immense and I wish I had Seuss' imagination to describe such utter flibbergastic numperkals they all are! And I hope they will pay for it.

"Virginia school district denies banning kids from reading Dr. Seuss books" https://nypost.com/.../virginia-school-district-denies.../"6

Dr. Seuss books won't be published for racist images" https://abcnews.go.com/.../books-nix-books-dr-seuss-works...

"Six Dr. Seuss books, including Scrambled Eggs Super! and If I Ran the Zoo, will stop being published because of 'racist and insensitive imagery' after Biden dropped author from 'Read Across America Day'" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/.../6-books-nix-books-Dr...

#And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street #cancel culture #loss

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titconao3 · 7 years

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that 11 question thing

i was tagged by @antarctic-echoes & @mametupa, so here are my answers. Warning: i suck at these things. Sorry. tl;dr: i’ve been told several times i was too much of a realist, too down-to-earth and sadly unable to dream & leave what things actually are aside, and it shows.

1. what’s your favorite hobby? Er, i don’t really know... anything where i can forget myself?

2. What’s the movie you hate more than anything? there are several, and probably quite a few i’ve erased from my memory. i don't get why people like Love, Actually so much for instance - so depressing. And others, but i either don’t remember them or don’t want to get flamed, so.

3. which would you rather be: Ninja or British Spy? And why? i teach English for a living, but i practised a martial art for a few years. No idea, you pick! If the British Spy thing means lots of sex, no thanks. If it means cool fun toys, why not. If the ninja thing means being able to do fancy moves, why not. If it’s about the training that allows me to do that, probably not.

4. What’s your favorite book of all time? i don’t know. No, really. There are many books i enjoyed, but i’ve learned to be wary of picking them up again for a reread...

5. If you could go anywhere, whether it be a real or fictional location, where would you go? no idea. Since i’m a very positive person who expects disappointment everywhere, well. Somehow, people think i’m pessimistic; i tend to see this as being realistic. It’s not that i don’t travel or like travelling, it’s just... i’m always keeping in mind it’s just a distraction that barely covers the emptiness of existence ;-) many places sound really great, but then when you’re there’s always that “gah i hate mountain paths” or “crap nearest toilets are far away” or “and now there’s the horrible trip back to look forward to” or “my feet are wet” or “those moving stairs are such a pain” or “the Pegasus galaxy is cool and stuff but i don’t have reliable access to AO3″... you get the idea.

6. Which would you rather fight? An angry horse-sized duck or a hundred angry duck-sized horses? depends on what tools / weapons etc i have at my disposal, i’d say? Do i have something that can incapacitate one large thing? or something to outrun small-legged animals for long enough i’d be safe?

7. If you could have any dinosaur as a pet, which one would you have? i don’t want pets of any sorts. Not that i don’t like animals (i really do!), but i can’t properly care for them; i don’t have the time / space / patience etc. And, while dinosaurs are cool, they’d need a lot, and probably wouldn't be happy in an environment they’re not adapted to.

8. What is your favorite animated movie? er... i really don’t watch a lot of films, animated or otherwise. There are some i’ve enjoyed, and they’re definitely not Disney films. No shade on those who enjoy them, bear in mind i haven’t watched a Disney film since i was a kid, apart from the Lion King on a plane or something and the political undertones and how the way the lady lion’s role was downplayed made me angry (and why do so many of these end on “and they got married, the end”? not the more recent ones, from what i understand?) and also why do these people sing all the time? i... don’t like random singing??? i live in fear of the Lucifer musical ep, and i’m one of like 2 or 3 people who don’t like Lucifer singing stuff. I try to pretend he’s Freddie Mercury when writing him. Regarding anime, i’m probably supposed to say Miyazaki or something because everyone loves his stuff, and... it’s nice, sure. Really. Honestly, young characters have never been my thing - Ponyo was sure cute, i guess? i liked the Kenshin OAV because it mixed great music, anime, trope use etc? Or should i mention The Grave of the Fireflies because it’s all deep and stuff? It’s really good, but i’d never EVER rewatch it. Or perhaps Ghost in the Shell? great Kenji Kawai music there. Haven’t watched any animated film in ages.

9. What is your favorite dessert? i generally don’t really like sweet things - i can appreciate them, but one spoonful or two is enough; it’s not really my thing.

10. what is your movie score? the... number of films i’ve watched? i used to be big on artsy cinema in my younger days, now i can’t stand being still for several hours, surrounded by people potentially munching on crunchy stuff. I’d probably not get a good score (HAHAHA) at most quizzes. to answer the question, the music i’m living to? i do enjoy some film scores - but i like silence more.

11. If you could go to dinner with any fictional character, who would you choose and why? no idea. i don’t have anything interesting to say to anyone. i imagine i can pretend for a while, but that’s what i already do most of the time i’m not home, so... i mean, there are many characters i find interesting / fascinating, but i don’t fit in their world or they don’t fit in mine. How would that work? Am i a lowly ensign on the (original) Enterprise? What am i supposed to talk about with Tony Stark and his buddies? i guess i could just stare moodily at a beer bottle while Methos looks all cool and liquid on the chair next to me, he’s probably one of those people who won’t mind silence too much? It would be rude to pester him about what he’s lived through. Maybe ask where he gets his sweaters, they look comfy. Not Lucifer, because i’m not the Detective (or in her orbit) / a pretty young thing / a good singer. I can drink? But i don’t know what to do with myself in a club, so. and now from @mametupa: 1. Which is your favorite holiday and why? As a rule, i dislike holidays. It’s uncomfortable, i don’t particularly want to see most of my family, and it all feels forced. Of course i do know that for some people it’s a joyous time, but be it Xmas / Easter / birthdays whatever, it’s... not my thing. Sorry.

2. What is your favorite food to cook or eat? i’m easy either way. A few years ago i used to cook with a friend. We became estranged, and now i don’t really cook anymore - i mean, i still cook everything myself everything i eat (including bread or yoghurts) but since then i’ve lost the taste and it’s all very utilitarian; fuel so i don’t faint at the gym or at work. i don’t really care, but i’m okay with or at least will try almost anything. Really.

3. If you had to live in the body of someone else, who would it be? Er, no one. Honestly, and that’s not a fun answer, but i’d rather not exist at all. Bodies are hard work (plus luck) to maintain reasonably healthy and, worse, in what is considered “good shape.” Besides, some that really look good are actually not good at all inside, not all diseases / pains are visible.

4. Favorite season? spring makes me sneeze, summer is too hot, winter is that horrible holiday period, so i guess autumn? i do like red colours on leaves (but i live in a city, so don’t see them much like on those nice autumn moodboards with pretty forests)?

5. If someone wrote a book about you, what would the title be? that won’t happen :-)

6. Favorite childhood book? i was a voracious reader until lit studies made me quit reading for a few years, so i read a lot as a child. I kept ideas, feelings, one little thing from many books, but i don’t think there’s ONE book that made me go THIS ONE. sorry.

7. Favorite smell? i don’t know. Wet forest? Fresh bread? Fireplace? What is one supposed to answer? Definitely not perfumes or flowers, i’d sneeze and my eyes would become liquid or something.

8. What different languages do you speak or understand? French, English. I used to be good at Spanish, and i can (especially after a few days of resetting the brain bits) cope. My grammar and vocab are all shot to hell but i can definitely get by; i understand people enough to enjoy guided tours & stuff and get food and a hotel and get directions to park the car. For some reason i now have an English accent whenever i try to speak Spanish (i once said “nos quedamos ten minutos” sounding like a posh XIX lady and the friend i was travelling with was laughing like a loon. She had to repeat what i said to me). i’d like to learn Arabic, because it’s different and the grammar and sounds and writing and word etc are both alien to what i’m used to and yet a source of the languages i’ve learned before, so. i did Latin and Ancient Greek loooong ago, and well it was useful to read street signs in Greece and St Petersburg (i’d brushed up on the Russian alphabet just in case).

9. Favorite era? they’re all interesting, past and present and future. The way some categories of people are / were treated tends to make me run away, though - women, sexual or racial or or or minorities, slavery, you name it. Nowhere, nowhen is 100% a haven.

10. What 5 things would you want to have with you if you were marooned on an uninhabited tropical island? i don’t know if the Internet counts, i guess i could tell people i’m stranded with it, so maybe not? If it doesn’t, no idea. i guess i should say useful stuff like, i don’t know. A fridge with electricity? A survival handbook? A fully-stocked house (with furniture) with electricity? or a means to kill myself as painlessly as possible?

11. One thing that you would never throw away? i don’t know. something useful? Or trousers, perhaps? i hate being naked. But a knife is always useful? Probably? i tend to not throw away stuff BUT i don’t *get* a lot of new stuff either (unless it’s polish, but even there i’ve slowed down because it has to be really special to catch my eye now). i don’t have 11 questions to ask people, but if anyone wants to pick among the many that have been asked before, feel free.

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tristanlovesthequeen · 3 years

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Mnnemenic Cathexis

Tristan Arcelona

Nicole Archer, Critical Theory

3/3/17

William Kentridge’s show at MOMA on the seventh floor was amazing. I walked in not knowing what to expect. I have seen William Kentridges art in the past but never in a walk-in installation form. I knew that the installation was supposed to invoke a sense of melancholia, however, I brought my own headset.

This changed the environment for me. The sounds that were going on outside of my head I could identify as explosive, loud booms and trombones. I added the soundtrack of Kero Kero Ichiban, which are sweet melodies from Japan.

The kinetic sculpture in the center of the room was well built and fluid, representing perhaps the inner workings of a clock. There were projections on the walls, videos of William Kentridge in his physical form, and dancers in a second line like form. The march reminded me of Kara walker’s silhouettes. And the Botan death march of the Phillipines.

The modern dancers involved in the performance, were somehow syncopating with the rhythm I brought in my headphones. The performance also used playlike stylistic elements, in which people were hiding under the table and emerging like clowns from a clown car. There was no color in the film, only greyscale.

There were hangman’s steeples doing dances, which I am only identifying as such now, however they looked more abstract in person. They represented stick figure-like bodies doing the robot. There were horns on stilts which I expected to be speakers emanating sounds however, they were found objects, possibly alluding to satellite forms.

The continuing projections were animations from William Kentridge, white on black background, alluding to radio signals projecting into outer space. I remember words revolving on a horizontal axis reminding me of the Universal film logo, or the beginning of an old news broadcast. I read the words Sharon, which can also be pronounced as Chiron, which is the forgotten planet.

Chiron lies outside of Pluto, or so I think, it might be a moon or meteor that revolves around the Sun.

The dancers were doing flips and acrobatic movements, high kicks with flowing drapery, bald women like beautiful sculptures. The videos reminded me of Negritude films from Paris in the 1920’s. Josephine Baker meets New York contemporary dance or Jacob’s pillow. William was marching on a side scroll. He was using chairs to act as obstacles or stairs or elevators. He was assisting a woman with the chair, helping her find a seat. This might be a symbol of trying to make amends with the apartheid system in South Africa.

Another portion of the film was a South African couple doing the dance of love. The man attempting to kiss as the woman looked away in pride or disinterest. The woman forgiving and jumping up straddling the man in a warm embrace.

Every so often I would check back in with where I was sitting in the room, see who entered, where they would sit, and observe the perpetual motion of the accordion-like wood and metal sculpture moving silently.

Sigmund Freud influenced much of the Surrealist manifesto including the works of Salvador Dali. Salvador then went onto create a style which he named, paranoiac, amplifying many of the negative undertones of the subconscious psyche. I believe Sigmund and he, wrote to each other very often.

William Kentridge views the installation as the prophecy of time. The machine in the center of the room represents the human lung. The rhythm it represents is the rhythm of syncopation of the human body in the realm of time. He also views the animations of the signals flowing out of the earth into space as the representation that we all are constantly broadcasting ourselves. We are wound at birth and in the end we unwind.

The sets onscreen are made of cardboard, and in real time, the cones represent sound. The concept of time is one that can be broken, like a ming vase, reset and reformed, we can go backwards, forwards wherever we want and sometimes it is misshapen. Time and the broadcasts we send keep going until they reach the black hole at the end of the universe.

Sigmund Freud, disavows the theories of prior psychologists in their efforts to say that anything psychical (what people think or believe) is completely conscious or on purpose. He believes that the practice of hypnotism and dream psychology disproves that node of belief. Consciousness is a “transitory” state of being, meaning that it is free flowing. What lies beneath, can become evident at any time. There are also subconscious thoughts that stay buried. The subconscious thoughts that do not become evident, are because they are held in check by another force. This is described as the state of being repressed or resisted to being made evident. There are three states of consciousness. Unconscious, preconscious, and conscious. Unconscious is what we suppress. Preconscious is the free flowing thoughts. Conscious is the transitory state between all three.

The ego, contributes to those three. It is the ruler of the sexual motives, the motivating factors for living, the raison d'etre. The repressed, can also be what one desires. The abject, can also be what one needs to persevere, and can also change onto something proper. We can also describe the balance or imbalance of all of these three as mental illness or mental stability.

The ego is sometimes concerned with representing exactly what we have repressed. There may be many unconscious desires in the ego, unconscious desires sometimes lose their importance, sometimes they represent things that we cannot achieve in person, in other words it is fantasy. Sometimes our focus is upon a nmemic residue, the traces of a memory can be similar to a hallucination. The shift from nmemic cathexis to a perception element can separate the conscious from the unconscious.

Freud places importance on the memory of the auditory experience. Sometimes an auditory cue indicates a hallucinatory experience. Our consciousness is ambiguous. We can only surface our unconsciousness by making these ideas known in the real world. The question is how these ideas can be represented in physical form. In an artist's vision, we can represent these ideas on a page or in a painting without actually acting on these feelings. Once again we are in a realm of fantasy.

William Kentridge is trying to reform time, by acting as a white male helping a young South African girl. The way this is represented is metaphorically. The sense of morality coming from the white man stems from the sense of morals that is under the umbrella of the Superego. This projection is an ideal, it is a broadcast that expands into the universe that will hopefully influence a generation. This idea of eliminating racialization is bringing the idea of apartheid to the forefront in William Kentridges piece. In Freudian terms, he is bringing the unconscious historical racial discrimination of black skinned people in South African society into the conscious realm. It is important to talk about Kentridge's piece in this way because people, mostly everyone, and especially those of “other” or “exotified” races, in other words “non-white,” are descriminated against, but we are not sure why. This can be because of bias, or even biological strife embedded in our genes. Currently there has been a social uprising in South Africa, when the rest of the globe had thought that aphartheid had disappeared. It seems that the more we evolve, the more everything remains the same. Art is there to influence the way people think and how we interact with one another on a daily basis. These ideas can manifest themselves in immediate action, however art is there to influence the way people think in the long run.

Freuds idea of fetishism is the idea of substitution. In other words, any object of desire sits in place of his or her own genitalia. William Kentridge, while both idealising black fashion and culture is also showing his appreciation and his own fetish for black skin. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with this attraction between a white man and a black woman, however what Freud presupposes is that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Aphartheid is a metaphor for the separation of us all. What is the subconscious is the desire to be separated from his own people. On the exterior is the avoidance of negative contact. On different levels these desires become inflated or conflated. In avoidding these things sometimes they become supressed. Supression leads to anxiety around a subject. It also inflates miniscule narratives. It skews meaning and reappears in dreams or in other people skulls. These thoughts become viral or memetic. These preconcieved myths lead to a preconsciousness. Kentridge attempts to make a tomfoolery of the image of the structure used to hang people. The images appear as breakdancing robo-structures. If we can simplify these things they lose their meaning. Structurally they are breakdancing stickmen, historically and culturally, Kentridge allows us to forget this part.

If Freud were here, he would say the dancing stick men are supressions created by the super ego to hold the id in place. He may accuse Kentridge of wanting to hang his female, black, counterpart, however, the superego represses this latent desire and requires us to say “no way.” If the id is controlled by what we have seen in the past, historical visions, biological, and cultural predispositions, as well as how we appear to ourselves and to others, then the super ego is necessary. This may also mean that we cannot always get what we want. It may also mean that Kentridge's dream of broadcasting ourselves is true.

Humans experience positive and negative emotions, sadness, melancholia, disappointment, struggle, strife, failure, and all of this is hard to surmount. If we are broadcasting this side of ourselves, the fear is that it will come back to us in the form of an ouroboros, or cyclical nature of time, in which we cannnot escape. This is also called the cylce of samsara in Hindu cultures. The South African preacher can stay positive his entire life, however this may not mean that he can escape apartheid. The systematic realities cause us to implode. At times there are so many distractions, and theoretical bombs being dropped that we cannot move. Sigmund may say we supress ourselves, but it is also the society we live in.

However if we see the positivity in people we might be able to break free of these bonds that keep us down. Sigmund Freud never actually focused on anything positive in his writings. He relays human experience robotically. It is not exactly that he is criticizing human reality, except that he analyzes us in a way that makes sense while not exactly making any of us feel well. In this sense it might be true. That the harrowing reality of us is that we are human, we are imperfect, and in actuality, we are all in this together.

Freud's In Dreams outlines the concept of fear. The concept of triggering someone's emotions and waiting for them to respond. The experience of shock and the complimentary memory loss of the event at hand. These fears and shocking memories can lie dormant, eventually bubbling up little hints of anxiety, influencing the way we see people. Repressed desires can manifest themselves in dreams, thereby eliminating the circle. All the subtleties and nuances of everyday life are there, in the dream, presenting themselves as they come forth.

Sex emotions are those most difficult to control and deal with. In dreams there are theorists that believe the dream experience is not controlled by the participant.

In conclusion dreams are cool too.

#Tristan Chase Arcelona

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beesandbooks1 · 4 years

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Discussion: Can gritty fantasy be….good?

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

Gritty Fantasy: A loose definition

All right, what do I mean by “gritty?” I mean that weird blend of hyper-realistic violence and super detailed fantasy. Books where the humans of the world are already fighting one another in bloody and awful ways, but on top of that any scene with fantasy elements ends up looking like a slasher film. Lots of blood and gore. But also, lots of sexual assault. In my definition, “realistic” fantasy is actually “gritty” fantasy because… Once you introduce the fantasy elements you are given a free pass to not include “realistic” portrayals of pseudo-Medieval society. Also, pseudo-Medieval is already unrealistic, read a history book please. A good one. So a gritty fantasy setting is one that is patriarchal, probably has racist undertones if not a full blown version of racism (I’m only talking about white authors either ignoring racism or poorly cobbling together a racism metaphor, authors of color portraying racism in a fantasy setting is an entirely different situation), might borrow elements from Western history that telegraph portions of the plot, has a bad understanding of Medieval hygiene, and comes with lots of uncomfortable descriptions (of blood, sexual assault, violence, and probably poop at one point).

It’s time for new fantasy authors…

Now, that being said, as tired as I am of reading hyper-realistic violence and sexual assault written by white men, I am ready to see those themes explored by authors of color and LGBTQ+ authors. I touched on this in the first section, but white authors are not good at writing racism into their fantasy worlds. We just aren’t. A lot of times the results are a jumbled mix of real racial slurs, invented ones, real racial stereotypes, and ones based on fantasy races such as elves and whatnot. There are much better analyses out there by people of color, but the gist of the issue is that a fantasy racism metaphor usually ignores the real roots of racism and kind of plays up the “isn’t this so silly that they hate each other because they look different?” idea, while also not delving into the deep history of racism and the institution of it. Racism is an institution, it’s not just a jumble of stereotypes incorrectly applied. You can’t argue that elves vs. dwarves is a metaphor for racism because traditional fantasy doesn’t have the elves enslave the dwarves, stealing them from their homelands and spending hundreds of years forcing them to recreate their own culture only to steal and wipe that out too.

There is an over saturation of white men being lifted up in the fantasy world. And what’s more, there seems to be this myth that the fantasy reading community doesn’t want interesting and complex women, characters of color, or queer characters to be the leads. YA Fantasy has taken great strides recently, and I’d like to see adult aimed “epic” fantasy start getting there as well.

Final thoughts

It might sound unfair, but I’m tired of certain themes and writing styles in fantasy that come from white men. I tried to read a fantasy book recently and just… It immediately struck me as boring, overdone, and too male-centric. The tropes and plotlines of high and epic fantasy should be told by marginalized voices that have not been promoted enough now. As a writer, I don’t want to say “it’s time to stop writing” to anybody, but if you want to be the next GRR Martin or JRR Tolkein, really take a look at what you’re writing and ask yourself if you have something new to offer the genre. If all you’ve done is take a historical event from Western Europe, given all the characters new names, thrown in some hyper-realistically described battles and assaults, deprived everyone of a happy ending, and made your big “twist” a dragon? Yeah, that’s not a good contribution to the fantasy world. Especially not if you tried to flesh it out with racist undertones or more rape.

For the record, this was not the post I planned on writing. This post really got away from me, and what’s more it’s not really good. The structure is messy and the writing is mostly rambling on about a topic that I as a white woman don’t have the authority to define. This post was originally supposed to be about how women in fantasy inject softer themes into their fantasy writing, creating more interesting worlds for it. That being said, I have a couple of questions for y’all:

What are some recommendations of adult fantasy written by authors of color that create interesting and nuanced worlds?

Would you like to read a similar post but about LGBTQ+ authors writing fantasy?

Would you like to read the post I was supposed to write about softness in gritty fantasy worlds?

#bookblr #fantasy #epic fantasy #high fantasy #dark fantasy

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thesinglesjukebox · 6 years

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ARIANA GRANDE - 7 RINGS [4.28] For the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone...

Iris Xie: Ariana, NO. Riding on the rhythms of Black artists like Princess Nokia and 2 Chainz and mixing it with "My Favorite Things": I am astounded at her dismissive fluidity between the verse and the chorus, and her blatant entitlement in the hook, "I want it, I got it." This is not the same way that Beyoncé and other artists have used it; when they say "I want it, I got it," it's not just for the singer, it's representation for all who need to seek power and strength in that message. This is a declaration of privileged entitlement and is only sympathetic to those who need to seek power in not being held accountable, in feigning innocence, in hiding behind privilege to do whatever they want without consequences. Ari's built her empire, and the discarded cores of the songs wrung dry for "7 Rings" is part of the plan for her expansion. The disrespect of Black artists has always been part of the story in popular music (and the world) and is threaded into the very framework and sound of popular music, but it's honestly breathtaking how obvious and easy Ariana is about it. It's brutal, it's self-indulgent, it's disrespectful as fuck, and if she decides to cast herself as Alexander the Great for the "7 Rings" music video, that would just be perfect for this song. [0]

Vikram Joseph: I really thought Ariana might be self-aware enough to understand how downright obnoxious she might come across in releasing a glorified flex about her gigantic wealth, but apparently not. It's brazenly over-the-top ("my receipts be looking like phone numbers") and I hoped, vainly, that it might be satirical -- her own explanation of the backstory behind the song makes it plain that it's not. No right-minded person resents her success, but in this socioeconomic climate -- oh, fuck it, in any socioeconomic climate -- a line like "I see it/I like it/I want it/I got it" is craven and crass. Musically, it's a bland, passable slow-jam, apart from the parts which exhume the decaying corpse of "My Favorite Things," which nobody wanted to see. Ariana Grande has called this a "friendship anthem" (because she bought rings for 6 of her friends), which reveals more about her concept of friendship than she perhaps would have liked. [2]

Alex Clifton: I know Ariana's described "7 Rings" as a friendship anthem, which on the surface is true; it's inspired by a shopping trip where she bought her girls friendship rings. But for a song about friendship, it feels awfully distant. The lovely thing about "Thank U, Next" was that it was personal and empathetic, exes named and thanked with grace in a way we rarely ever see in pop music. Here, friendship seems to be replaced with luxury; her posse feels anonymous, like they could be any girls in the club. The song's an absolute bop, making "My Favourite Things" into something sexier than it should be while also giving Ariana the chance to rap impressively. [7]

Danilo Bortoli: It was not impossible to see this coming. After the song that pretty much defined the social media zeitgeist in all of its lack of glory, comes the contractually-obliged, self-congratulatory victory lap which anticipates an also mandatory album rollout ritual. Meaning: "7 Rings" should be a mere filler. Not only because it sounds like Princess Nokia with less wit and bravado and more privilege, and not only because it evokes mindless "Pretty Boy Swag" comparisons (suggesting Soulja Boy's flow is not in public domain by now). No, "7 Rings" is bad because it strips away Ariana's empathy and replaces it with a bunch of meme-worthy signifiers: Breakfast at Tiifany's, ATM machines, retail therapy, all wrapped under a cold, soulless beat. Yet, given how calculated that beat is, you can tell cold was what she aimed. Sadly. Here, "I want it, I got it" is her mere wish, lacking the wit to make it happen. [3]

Thomas Inskeep: "I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it," Grande sings on this ode to conspicuous consumption, and while I'm happy she's doing well, it's hard to relate when I've been unemployed for almost five months. And the track, based around a chunk of the melody of "My Favorite Things," is nothing special. She's raised expectations for her music, after the quality of last year's Sweetener, so this doesn't cut it on multiple levels. [3]

Julian Axelrod: I hoped "Thank U, Next" would be the Lemonade to Sweetener's Beyonce. Now I'm worried it's Ariana's Reputation. [6]

Katherine St Asaph: Viktor & Rolf just released a set of comically expensive reaction GIFs, also known as their Spring/Summer '19 collection. You probably shouldn't continue reading this blurb until you've seen every single one. The dresses themselves are either nightgowns with epaulets or hyper-femme tulle ziggurats, like Mount Everests constructed entirely from bubblegum and Marie Antoinettes. The main details -- if you can really call something a "detail" if it's in huge meme font -- are emblazoned snot-slogans like "I Am My Own Muse" or "No Photos Please" or just "NO." So swamped in fabric, all the models look even more like children than usual, making the collection resemble Abercrombie tees or Nickelodeon tween shows, in all their oversassed questionability. But there's craftiness to the brattiness. Said the Vogue writer, perhaps with a slight whiff of "oh god, I really have to, don't I": "All the assorted typography and graphic design -- the text as well as the eagle head, the skull, the candy hearts, and so forth -- resulted from layers of additional tulle. Trite sentiments backed up by technical prowess." This also describes Ariana Grande's music: tart but frilly, meme-ready but warmly produced. Or rather, it's a description of her music since Sweetener and before this. For all the suffocating memesphere around it, "Thank U, Next" is a fine standalone Mariah Carey pastiche. "7 Rings" is a Gwen Stefani pastiche, primarily of "Wind It Up": garish showtune interpolation, slapdash arrangement, half-assed lyrics (being tied up with cuffs? Weird sex, but OK), and borrowed hip-hop posturing, as if her main takeaway from "Formation" was it being about buying shit. Can you even imagine how bad a fast-fashion version of those gowns would be? You can certainly hear it. [3]

Will Adams: Ariana Grande's post-Sweetener rebranding as an Extremely Online #queen is an instructive, if tiresome, example of how social media has blurred the lines between genuine authenticity and personality as imagined by PR suits. "7 Rings" does the same trick of "Thank U, Next" in that it attempts to reverse engineer memes as desperately as Katy Perry. But while "Next" was at least tuneful, this is a joyless cover of OMG Girlz's "Pretty Girl Bag," no more effective at fostering goodwill than a deluge of tweets that only serve to remind you that you'll never be her. [3]

Maxwell Cavaseno: There was once a time where Ariana singles needn't be based around their ability to serve as content and memes. That time may feel like years behind us but it was quite literally three months ago and yet is titanically irreversible. Now Grande's songs feel less like any real ability to showcase the talents of her singing, just more like suitable IG Story content based on an effervescent bitchiness demonstrated as "#confidence" and beholden to boringly cynical rap cadences. "Spend It" sucked years and years ago as a dead-eyed anthem by a 40-year-old pro making songs for 30-year-olds trying to hang with the 20-year-olds in the club. Distressingly, its progeny in "7 Rings" doesn't sound any less cynical. People can say all the critiques about the Sweetener run they could, but nevertheless that was a period in which you could honestly indicate that Ariana Grande was enjoying herself and doing her best. I'd be hard pressed to find such from material like this. [3]

Nicholas Donohoue: I get in fights over Ariana's message discipline. It is now settled law that "Thank U, Next" is the high point of Ari's career in terms of self-mythologizing, but I couldn't help feeling stung by: i) her releasing the song right before the peak of "Breathin'" (her actual high point of artistic expression), capping herself at the knees by cutting off one great point of personal vulnerability in lieu of addressing her less interesting public persona and, ii) by attaching "Thank U, Next," her tight construction of showcraft and narrative shifting, to a music video Frankenstein-ing four early 2000's movies with distinct tonal and subject conceits together. For as much love as I have for a titan of courage and rolling-with-the-punches like Ariana, I feel she might be careless as to what she transfers into her own sound and image. I don't know what "7 Rings" is suppose to mean. I have confidence this style of more showtune trap is an element of Ariana, but I don't know if it's a wise progression from the tuneful, honest, and numbly reminiscent take in "Thank U, Next". The money and excess politics over a spare beat are confounding mostly due to people loving it because they seem destined to never have it. This isn't even touching the racial critiques that Ariana is strolling where pop-based Black women have had to stomp (re: Rihanna and the word "savage"). Undeniably there is power here for Ariana, but who is meant to benefit from this, including Ariana? [4]

Jonathan Bradley: From the R&B undertones of debut album Yours Truly on, Ariana Grande has been a white pop artist who has attempted to situate her work in a racially liminal space: not black, and not even a pantomimed blackness in the mode of Miley Cyrus's less estimable moments or Iggy Azalea, but one nevertheless imbued with performative and stylistic cues borrowed from that cultural context. It's a position that is complicated by the proficiency of her baby-Mariah vocal, by -- perhaps unconsciously on her part -- the historically contested whiteness of Italian-Americans, by a debut hit that interpolated the Latino rapper Big Pun and featured a guest verse from white rapper Mac Miller, by pop's history of making African American ideas into mass culture, and by Grande's own political advocacy for civil rights causes. And alongside this has been her claim on a decidedly non-liminal gendered space: from pastels and ponytails to short skirts and rom-coms, Grande's image is underlined by stylized femininity. In her post Sweetener singles -- and even on "God is a Woman" -- she has used this to stake out a claim of maturity and independence, and, by extension, a distinctly feminine authority: "Thank U, Next," for instance, was a sugary distancing from the men with whom she'd been associated that asserted self-reliance ("her name is Ari") and professional success ("this song is a smash"). "7 Rings" continues blending girlishness with power, and like Taylor Swift on Reputation, Grande is making herself more untouchable by making her music chillier. She nods at Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn from the opening line on, and posits feminine solidarity and capitalist consumption as the enabling force of her dominance. Her flow here has been sourced to everyone from Princess Nokia to 2 Chainz to Soulja Boi, but considering the lyric, the likely inspiration seems to be Beyoncé on "Formation." And that rapping, the trap beat, and the nods to luxury goods combine to form Grande's most overt and most questionable tracing of blackness in her career. Conspicuous consumption in black music is an implicit challenge to systems of wealth that have excluded its makers; in a white context, it's just shopping. Grande's ability to sustain public goodwill in maintaining the tenability of these contradictions seems dependent as much on the sensitivity of her approach as it does on the context of the music. "7 Rings" makes more explicit some of the uncertain contours of Grande's music, but it does not fail: it is delicious in its fluffy imperiousness. [8]

Stephen Eisermann: I said this last year about Drake, but it rings true now about Ariana: it was only a matter of time before things got too problematic to ignore. Someone, somewhere will surely write about the musical blackface (as well as excessive use of bronzer), but focusing on the song alone -- yeah, this is hot. Ariana's coos play well with the trap arrangement and although she may have stolen someone's flow, she sure wears it well. It's a fun song to bop to, and I'm all for a good friendship banger, but ignoring all other circumstances for a banger is just irresponsible at this point. [6]

Crystal Leww: Ariana Grande's always made some incredible music, but the art direction and conversation around her has been subpar, at best, and oftentimes kind of icky! That first album Yours Truly was so beyond in how well it paid homage and tribute to the feeling of the late-'90s/early-'00s R&B pop. But there were accusations of playing into the idea of the Sexy Baby to sell records. A lot of this was super unfair -- Grande was so young at the time and most of this was projection by gross, older men who should have known better -- but this weird dichotomy between Grande as a really excellent musician and Grande as a frustrating image, brand, pop star, object of obsession from stans has persisted. "7 Rings" kind of rules as an actual track; Grande's created a super polished, slick product that pays homage to Soulja Boy flow while borrowing the melody and concept from The Sound of Music. But everything around this track sucks from the continued "borrowing" of Black culture (e.g., 2 Chainz's pink trap house) to use of "Asian" characters and urban culture to the insane defensiveness from Grande stans around all of this. I can't believe that Ariana Grande is going through her Katy Perry phase. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: God, this was a bad idea. Everything here shouldn't work -- the metronomic synths, the unholy fusion of Rodgers & Hammerstein to Soulja Boy, the diving head-on into the murky cultural appropriation accusations that have dogged Ariana for a minute now. And yet despite all of these (entirely self inflicted) problems, Ariana manages to pull together the best possible song given the circumstances. It's still not good, but her sheer force of personality makes "7 Rings" into an object of fascination. [5]

Alfred Soto: It's not any more mediocre than her other mediocre singles, but despite the famous sample and rap cadences she sounds like a person visiting a childhood home she happily left. The home is deluxe but sparely decorated, and the wine good. Guests are welcome, especially Mariah Carey. [5]

Edward Okulicz: I've seen The Sound of Music a number of times that is more than I wish to admit here. Rephrasing the song so it's not about things that are believably in the life of an Austrian nun and instead are about things you'd go buy or consume conspicuously isn't original, though. Big Brovaz did more with this chorus and I think poor-shaming is a PR mistake. [3]

Tobi Tella: Sampling The Sound of Music is an inspired choice, and one that will always get the inner theatre kid on me on a song's side. But the chorus mostly leaves me cold -- it's a fun boast, but there's not much too it and I don't think hip-hop is a particularly good genre for her. When she starts spitting bars during the bridge and saying things like "gimme the loot!" I just get secondhand embarrassment. [6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The inversion of "My Favorite Things" is sly: there's no admittance of sadness, the things in question aren't quotidian, and Ariana's able to attain everything at a moment's notice. The lay person can't just fly somewhere to witness "raindrops on roses" or "silver-white winters," but everything that Ariana lists is a consumable product that's readily purchasable. Since she was never sad in the first place, there's no actual need for "simply remember[ing]" anything -- she's creating her list of favorites as she has them rung up. As such, "7 Rings" isn't a song about surviving the present, but it does implicitly acknowledge its potential for being unsatisfactory. The cryptic synths and sparse arrangement hint at this sad undertone, but it never quite gets there. And therein lies the song's biggest flaw: the lack of melancholic (sub)text makes this less interesting, and the display of opulence is frequently offset by Ariana's fumbled rapping. There's little resembling actual human emotion or personality here, but given her success with "Thank U, Next" and now this, Ariana is maybe more interested in being a meme. [3]

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#ariana grande #7 rings #music #new music #pop #pop music #music video #music writing #music reviews

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