#also applies to movies and the disappearance of physical media

[josefksays]

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read." "There are things in life that we always need to have an abundance of, even if we only use a small portion." "If, for example, we consider books as medicines, we understand that it is good to have many at home instead of just a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine cabinet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutritional choice." "Whoever buys just one book, reads just that one and then gets rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, an asset. Anyone who loves books knows that a book is anything but a commodity."

Umberto Eco

[unexpectedreylo]

How Ben Solo Became A Martyr

If anyone were to pull me into a Hollywood studio office or lunch at some see-and-be-seen L.A.-area restaurant (personally, I like The Ivy) and ask me, a lifelong t.v. and movie viewer, what should show runners, directors, writers, and anyone who has a creative say in a production avoid doing, one thing I would say is, “Don’t unintentionally make a character a martyr.”

I don’t mean the sense of being a martyr in-universe but being a martyr to the audience.  

First I should define what I mean by “martyr.”  In a Christian sense, it’s a particular kind of saint who suffers and dies a horrible death for his or her faith.  In a secular sense it can describe anyone who suffers and/or dies horribly for a cause or that suffering/death calls attention to a matter of injustice.  This can also be applied in a more colloquial sense, such as when anyone suffers in some way or tries to use the impression of suffering to elicit sympathy.

If anyone at Lucasfilm is wondering why there’s a tribe of people on social media doing Ben Solo hashtags, making pins, and putting blue butterfly emojis on their handles, I’m here to tell Lucasfilm it’s because you guys made Ben Solo into a martyr to the audience.  

First, they made Kylo Ren/Ben Solo Han and Leia’s son/Anakin and Padmé’s grandson.  This makes him an easy investment for fans who have loved those characters for decades.  The killing Han Solo part might have made a certain segment of longtime fans so angry at Kylo they not only couldn’t forgive him but  they didn’t even want him redeemed but others could see how the death clearly affected him which elicits sympathy and compassion.

Second, they got an extremely talented, charismatic actor to play Kylo/Ben.  Adam Driver refused to play Kylo as a one-dimensional mustache-twirling killing-machine villain.  He added subtlety, nuance, and humanity to the role, all the while captivating the audience.  That he’s also sexy didn’t hurt.  As bad as Kylo could be, we also see the soft underbelly, the hints of the real Ben Solo hiding behind the persona.  He managed to create the kind of hero we’d been hoping to see in the ST within a short amount of time and practically no dialogue.  That’s extraordinary.  Driver took Kylo as seriously as he takes any other role.  He could’ve been making a bunch of other Oscar-nominated movies instead and we all know it.  Getting him was a gift and some fans out there think it was ultimately kind of wasted.

Third, if TFA hinted at Kylo’s humanity, Rian Johnson made it entirely the point of Kylo’s arc in TLJ.  When Kylo destroyed his helmet, Johnson was able to let Driver go nuts with a script that treated its characters like human beings instead of caricatures.  While Kylo was still capable of evil and all-around bad guy-ness, we also saw someone who could be gentle and caring, a tortured young man struggling with deep remorse, a lonely soul who can only find connection with someone who’s supposed to be his enemy, and sometimes, a hero.  Those pleading puppy dog eyes and trembling lips did a lot to elicit sympathy from filmgoers.  That he’s also sexy didn’t hurt.

Fourth, both the films and ancillary material showed Ben was subjected to abuse and suffered greatly for the mistakes of his elders.  Ben was targeted at conception and suffered with voices in his head most of his life.  A kitchen droid tried to take him out.  His parents were too busy doing whatever to really give him the attention he needed, even though Leia was aware some outside force was after her son.  His parents ultimately feared him and his emotional freak outs.  Han and Leia shipped him off to Luke’s poor man’s version of Hogwarts, leading to some deep abandonment issues.  Luke almost killed him in his sleep.  The very popular The Rise of Kylo Ren comics series basically acquitted Ben of everything he supposedly did leading up to his fall.  Then Kylo is verbally and physically abused by Snoke.  This has created a tremendous amount of sympathy for Ben, especially by those who have struggled with any number of real-world problems.  They identified with him.  Hollywood as of late has coded a lot of villainous or antihero characters as having mental illness or being neurodiverse or having addiction problems as well as enduring physical and verbal abuse.  I get that writers want to enrich these characters and make them relevant to a modern audience and that actors like the challenge in playing them but I also think Hollywood is being a little irresponsible about it.  Not only is it potentially stigmatizing it also seldom has a solution to those characters’ arcs other than death.  How is someone living with bipolar disorder or autism finding a kindred spirit of sorts in Kylo/Ben going to feel about the constant message that such a life isn’t worth living?  Ben just suffers and suffers and suffers and gets nothing for it.

Fifth, we’re presented with material depicting Ben’s youth.  Ben, when he’s not getting the stuffing kicked out of him by life, is quite lovable and as a child, adorable.  At least with Anakin Skywalker, we’re supposed to appreciate the tragedy of a good person who was loved falling to the Dark Side.  With Ben it makes us love him 10x more and at the same time make us even more upset they unceremoniously killed off that darling little moppet who played with butterflies, ran around the house naked, and begged his daddy to come home.  

Sixth, it didn’t seem like Ben was sufficiently loved either in the films or by Lucasfilm.  Or, to put it this way, whatever gestures Han, Leia, or Luke tried to throw Ben’s way were cases of too little too late.  I always wondered why, if Leia knew Snoke was manipulating Ben, she didn’t go out to find the mo-fo and kill him?  I would!  Leia tries to reach out to Ben in TROS but in the movie it comes off as her distracting him so Rey could inflict a fatal wound.  In fact, the weird thing about TROS is it feels like Leia was trying to take out Ben all along:  the distraction, ensuring Rey takes up her “Jedi path” which Leia knew full well this would somehow lead to Ben’s death, and finally her disappearing the same time he does.  It’s weird!  Han tries to save Ben but he’s a muggle who’s no match against his unstable son gifted with magic powers and lightsaber abilities.  Luke apologizes in TLJ but never had anything to say to his nephew again.  Adding insult to injury, the Blue Ghostie Exposition Scene From Hell establishes Luke and Leia as resigned to Ben’s fate all along, kicking their flesh and blood to the curb for a surrogate more to their liking.  It’s horrible!  The worst is of course his soulmate barely reacting to his death.  In the end nobody cared.  He’s like the kid who cleans up his act, gets good grades, gets into a decent college, and his family couldn’t care less.  The movie abruptly kills him off and it’s on to cheering and celebrations.  Nobody remembers or speaks of Ben and he’s not seen again in any form.  Four-five months after the film has come out, there’s no official Ben merchandise or collectibles.  It’s like “Ben Solo?  Don’t know him.”  You just know that every time the Star Wars social media team has to mention him or post something with him in it, they’re muttering under their breath, “Oh God, here it comes again.”

So they got a number of fans to empathize with Kylo/Ben and hope for his redemption as well as a chance at happiness after a lifetime of abuse and suffering, only to kill him off in a sudden and graceless manner.  There’s no payoff for Ben or the audience.  He’s just...gone.  To us it doesn’t seem right.  It seems cruel and unjust.  But fans are also a tenacious lot so they’re hoping Lucasfilm will realize it made a mistake and correct it.  In the meantime, Ben lives on in our fan fics, edits, fan art, and fan merchandise.

[kitsoa]

So, about your Theory ...

So, we talked on Reddit a while ago, Kitsoa, and I have some more thoughts about your theory. It’s more rambling and longer than what I previously intended – my apologies for this.

Kitsoa- Hello again! I’ll reply in brief through quotes though I’m not interested in doing a solid defense of my theory. Mostly it’s a lot of creative stretching using the crumbs of the narrative and I’m not feeling particularly impassioned to bring out the counter citations nor do I think it necessary.

Also: I have written and re-iterated upon this meta theory of mine multiple times so if I am not referencing the correct Original Post in question that’s probably because I never bothered to do a big manifesto and I will take the fall for that confusion.

It’s certainly very interesting but parts of it seem to not only be unsupported but outright contradicted by the games. For instance, take your surmise that Xehanort’s villainy is motivated by his knowledge of the KH world as fictional and his self-knowledge that he has to play the role of the villain to create a conflict and thus sustain the universe. His actual speech in Re:Mind after Dark Road’s world tour points to something else:

“All around the world people live seemingly peaceful lives. They believe themselves to be moral and virtuous, but it’s all an act. Darkness lurks in the pit of everyone’s heart. Their light is a total farce. Those who are weak, and who desire greater power, simply strip the strong of their power, and convince themselves they’ve earned it. That’s how people become tainted by darkness. They believe what they want them to believe, using hollow reasons as justification. They repeat this cycle, and their darkness grows. No, its better they be ruled by darkness. People carry delusions of having power, but it’s a lie. They are but sheep pretending to be wolves. Though I can admit, I can understand why.”

This edgy little diatribe isn’t about the nature of the universe or Xehanort’s own origin … it’s about his view of human (or talking animal, w/e) nature. It’s a similar theme to his final speech in KH3, and ends not with him concluding that he needs to play the role of a villain to create conflict ,,, but that to prevent the KH universe collapsing into chaos, he needs to become its absolute godlike ruler. Which is what sets up the conflict, yes, but his goal isn’t explicitly to create conflict to keep the universe going.

Re: Xehanorts motive aligning with a meta-awareness on his ‘role’ as a villain. This is a theme I was definitely playing with. Xehanort is clearly symbolic of the corrupting pursuit of knowledge and we have a god-like encounter spark stranger behavior yet. It’s a fascinating trope yes? Corrupted by the Truth. Saving the world by sacrificing the world. That was my angle. The World Tour from Re:mind had him summarizing his villainous disdain and I’ll agree that it gives him no direction towards a ‘role’. But I also take note of the fact that this enlightenment comes directly from the actions of the chessmaster MoM who could feasibly manipulate Xehanort towards a conflict-sparking war. If Xehanort isn’t directly and consciously responsible for fulfilling the metacontextual requirements for a ‘story’ then MoM is. And as I’ve stated it probably comes from a more experimental god-mode type motive.

And again, your argument that time doesn’t really exist in the Disney worlds until Sora arrives and this is related to them literally being stories that he’s diving into. I don’t know where you get this from, at all. We go into Disney worlds and experience plots unrelated to the films (KH1 Olympus, Halloween Town); we go into Disney worlds in medias res (too many to count); we go into Disney worlds before the movie’s events take place (BBS Deep Space, Neverland); we even go into Disney worlds in-between or after the movies’ events (KH3 Toy Box, San Fransokyo). Which rather gets in the way of a simplistic “Sora arrives in the Disney world, time starts flowing forward and the movie starts” look at things. You’d previously characterized this as “every world has its unique story” which IMO would be a more reasonable way to look at things rather than the stronger “the worlds literally are the stories and nothing else”.

I’ll defend this a little. The entire concept of the Worlds as Stories demands only that we recognize a higher reality. A reader/audience/ creator relationship with the happenings. When I say ‘time doesn’t exist’ I’m saying it doesn’t matter. The only thing that does matter is the time spent there by Sora (or his subsidiaries). Time is going to move between visits but not at a pace that runs independently of Sora (and co). And all of the events within those worlds are unique to the source material-- on the virtue of having Sora. But when I say the worlds are the stories, I mean it... metaphysically. The relationship between the greater kh multi-verse (and no greater) and these literal planet world island things is that of stories given form. Most all of my KH musings come from the very simple concept that formless metaphysical concepts like love, bonds, imagination, memories etc are literal, tangible things. Tangible. In this, Worlds are not so much another universe equal to other universes. They are a story, fictional and potentially subservient to a greater reality. It’s only from that understanding that I add the extra layer upon KH (and Quadratum by later extension) itself. 

The exact logic behind this reasoning is cyclic. KH is a fictional story to the literal higher reality (us) and seeing how there's a parallel within the narrative, I just applied that logic within the universe and used my understanding of the ‘literal metaphysics’ theme going on with other lore concepts.

Power of Waking ejecting Sora into “real reality”: This analysis is based on the idea that Sora is “waking himself up” out of dream states until he “wakes up” out of KH reality into “real reality”. But YMX tells him (and implicitly us, via the conventions of this kind of villainous exposition) that Sora is repeating the same error he made in 3D and sending himself into the abyss at the bottom of the Realm of Darkness, not doing the opposite thing and “waking himself up” out of KH reality.

I’ll just punt Power of Waking stuff. There is a lot of stuff with the power but I take most of the speculation from the name and the results. There’s a big interweave of darkness that can support or deny my thoughts within the next sentence and I’m electing now to wait and see. Sora abuses the power of waking-- ends up in another reality. Waking--> realities--> dreams--> sleep. Run with the word association. I like to think the ambiguity with sleep and the darkness of abyss has more to say about the nature of reality as a whole ergo: “everything is a dream” concepts that are hard to swallow. What is waking up, if you find yourself deeper in sleep? Nonesense stuff like that.

MoM as Creator of the KH universe/Quadratum as the “higher reality”: Not only is he presented as a clear villain figure; given that the rest of the Foretellers are based on the Seven Deadly Sins, MoM as their leader would clearly represent the sin of pride. We also have him saying in Back Cover that he “might” disappear from the KH world, suggesting that it was beyond his control; and Luxu’s report suggests that the KH3 Keyblade War was engineered to open a means for him to return to the KH universe, presumably via Sora going to where he is in Quadratum/”unreality”.

I believe strongly in this still. MoM can be a villainous figure and at the mercy of universal laws while still being the Creator and denizen of a higher plane. I try not to dig into scenarios too much but follow me here: Creator of the world, literally self-inserts himself into a world of his own creation. He’s a verified Mad Scientist who of course likes to experiment and test his creations and he does so directly, physically, to them. There, he put them on auto-pilot and is watching Characterization carry on. I am not claiming that he is breaking the rules of his own universe and traveling in and out with ease. Nor am I saying if he is exercising any sort of Creator-granted power over their will. He’s there, he’s interacting with them, and he’s watching them. I find it to be an intentional obstaining of power. Self imposed limitations OR an understood sacrifice for this meddling (think, giving up ‘divine’ form to live amongst his ‘mortal’ creations in divine parallel. he is at the will of his universe but not out of control.)

When he says he ‘might’ disappear not only is he being vague on purpose to terrorize his high-strung apprentices but he’s made no indication that it’s something against his intention. And the actions taken by Luxu in formulating his return mean nothing to his plan or his ability or his potential Creator status. I can’t stress how Long Game I perceive MoM’s actions to be. All in the effort to observe, toy, and curate the perfect... something. And since I am talking about the literal nature of stories, I mean the ‘perfect’ story.

Also, we may note that if it was truly a “higher reality”, Quadratum wouldn’t be noted as the fictional Verum Rex video game in KH3 – there’d be no explicit sign at all of its existence, as it would be the higher reality generating the lower one. Which suggests that what may actually be the case, if the series is going meta, is that KH-verse and Quadratum view each other as fictional – in which case MoM would be somebody falsely claiming or believing to be the Creator, which makes sense in relation to the sin he represents.

Not that I’m saying KH-verse isn’t generated by a higher reality/being; but I don’t feel that the higher reality is Quadratum or that the higher being is MoM. There was a fairly interesting post on Reddit comparing KH to Plato’s world of the forms; in which case Kingdom Hearts would be the higher reality from which both regular KH-verse and Quadratum are generated. Or “unreality” really is a “lower reality” than the regular KH-verse, which TBF seems a bit less likely than “’reg. KH-verse’ and ‘unreality’ view each other as mutually fictional but are actually ontologically equal”.

I think my theory posts predate most of the Quadratum reveal so the details of the reveal haven’t been accounted for in my words but I did call it when breaking down Remind’s Yozora scenario. That said yes, I think there is a higher reality and I feel like you mentioned it outright. I see KH and Quadratum as equal fictional realities, segregated but connected through creator. Some of my earlier meta posts before re:mind saw Quadratum as the “higher reality” (or like “host reality”) until the presence of an author between them became apparent enough. We can potentially consider MoM=the author as a separate subject in this respect as it’s not entirely dependant on that reveal. Ultimately, my point in this caveat of the theory is that the relationship between KH and Quadratum strikes an intentionally meta-referential parallel to the actual creator Nomura. That’s an angle that is very audacious and I have full understanding in the denial but it’s my supporting evidence to a higher power within the re:mind secret episode alone.  As for the ‘unreality’ I literally think that is just a way for them to say ‘fictional’ without saying the word, not necessarily an indication of ‘rank’ (for lack of a better word). I use a little reverse logic on the reveal in Melody of Memory when I claim they are ‘equal fictional realities’. No one thinks to assume that they themselves are also “fake” so it;s not a stretch to believe that the reverse assumption could be true. This putting KH and Quadratum on the same level and almost guaranteeing a connection through a mutual creator. 

Now, you also talk about the Whispers in FF7R, but in that they’re in-universe contextualised as “guardians of destiny”, essentially manifestations of the Will of the Planet. Which just goes to show what I talked about earlier – the meta-level of a story can’t exist without a surface-level narrative. We know that the Whispers out-of-universe represent fan anger at changes to the plotline; but they’re presented as something in-universe, which can be defeated by in-universe forces (another reason I doubt it as it seems to leave no room for our heroes’ victory in the confrontation with MoM that’s being teased as the next saga).

I bring up the Whispers to note a synonymous use of the words ‘destiny’ and ‘fate’ to ‘story and ‘narrative’ Not explicitly of course, that would break the 4th wall, but its a subtext that's easier seen in a ‘remake’ because of direct references and deviations being drawn. I think the same synonymous use can be applied when brought up in KH because of their common creative entity.

Finally: How do you see this “metapocalypse” of yours playing out as an actual KH game? We know the conventions well enough by now – a trip through Disney worlds fighting monsters and villains in flashy shonen-style combat, being stalked and looked over ominously from afar by a council of villains with mysterious schemes. Then an invasion of the villains’ lair by the heroes with a final serving of flashy, SFX-heavy boss battles, a number of dramatic plot twists and arc resolutions, and an ending with the villains’ schemes having been at least forestalled. Then we get the ending credits; with an epilogue, a superboss and a secret ending all hinting at more to come.

Well I’m glad you asked! Honestly, I’m basically writing a fanfiction about it. I’m writing the story in part to engage some of these theories/speculations into a serviceable game narrative. So I’ll be vague:

Thematically: This breaking the 4th wall has the power to thematically drive home concepts of free will, defining your personhood and defying expectations. Furthermore, you have questions like... what makes something real? What makes it matter and what’s important? With growing up and the sanctity of youth being a constant struggle as the series and the characters age, the reverence in imagination and growing connections to things that aren’t stereotypically ‘real’ is a strong concept. If I were to break down the big message simply: As long as it’s real in your heart it doesn’t matter.

Overall, the reveal doesn’t really have to impact the basic formula. You can have Disney World Hopping and Villainous characters scheming and manipulating a greater force. I personally think the world-hopping parallel can become more direct with the context of it being movies/stories adding a different understanding of the process of visiting those worlds and meeting those characters. The episodes can be more about fate and predestination and can speak directly to the importance of the connections to those worlds. And the dramatic stakes are the literal threads of reality and godhood! 

If I am to be more detailed and imaginative (without substantial evidence)  I might say... MoM’s experiments in manipulating his own created world(s) are aiming to shape Sora (or 2nd favorite son Yozora) into some kind of perfect conduit for the marraige of reality and fiction and the success or failure of that process might weaponize his ability to connect with other hearts... real and not, all to the greater ascention of one chessmaster. 

(That’s not even mentioning how I have a personal reason to dislike it as it reminds me of an old theory that the KH plot was actually SRK imagining it all up in their childhood games or to put a darker twist on that idea, Sora dreaming it all up in a coma or while dying. I hated reading those ideas when I was younger and still do.)

I’m gonna sympathize hard with this. I hate ‘it was all just a dream’ theories. They are cheap and they trivialize the journey. That is not what this theory is saying. There is a higher reality in this concept and that is used as a proxy for our relationship with the series. The imagery of dreams is only a small facet of the reality/unreality theme so there is no ‘waking up’ or ‘end of story, goodbye’ attitude. The commentary is broader and it can potentially speak on the power of dreams and reality. The ‘realness’ of fake things. I’m sort of calling out KH for what it is: an imaginative story that expands upon what it means to truly experience stories.  Anyway, I rambled more than I thought. I haven’t written anything about KH in months so this was a little caffine shot for me. I’m not gonna be too stuck in the details and nor do I care exactly. I’m a story teller first and I just so happened to have predicted some things not so much because of the hints being dropped but because I understand some of the thematic intent behind the lore and certain narrative beats. The rest is just me having fun and finding the best reading. Sometimes I’m right. 

[reeree1500]

His Aphrodisiac...Part 2 Vampire Ivar! x Reader

Disclaimer: Smut 😏(an attempt), spelling and grammar mistakes😬 and my cliched imagination🤣Thank you for all the love and support💕☺️

Taglist: @yanii-the-hippie @peaceisadirtyword @laketaj24 @oceans-daughter-3  @camatsuru @youbloodymadgenius @calum-hoodwinked-me @wuxiesalt @supernaturalvikingwhore @readsalot73 @affection-rabbit @blonddnamedhandz @paintballkid711 @ivarthethiccness @limbo-limbo-limbo @funmadnessandbadassvikings 

Weeks had gone by after our steamy session in Ivar’s office. I still couldn’t process the fact that he was a vampire. That ancient tale of a monster who sought nothing but blood was true. However, he had proved otherwise. Ivar didn't seem like the type of person to go around sucking people’s blood just because he felt like it. No, he was the type that when I had a problem he would make it disappear. Like Johnathan, my ex-fiancee who wouldn't stop harassing me. As soon as Ivar had found out about him, he never showed up again. It was as if he had disappeared into thin air. Of course I was relieved at the time, but now I cant help but think about if Ivar had anything to do with it...

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it was the night of the annual Lothbrok Corp dinner. Only a select few people from the office were to attend as many of our sister branches would also send their representatives. Not to mind the fact that the founders of Lothbrok corp would all be there as well, with their friends and family. This year the dinner had been set to occur at Ivar’s mansion upstate. This included a secluded area where the next house wouldnt be in sight for miles. Ivar was a man of privacy and now I could understand why. The dinner was to start in an hour and I had yet to finish my makeup. I wasn't really one to amazing at it, but I knew what would compliment my (y/s/t) complexion. As I finish applying my mascara, I take one last look in the mirror before heading out to the kitchen to find my phone and call an Uber. Taking my coat in one hand and juggling my keys, phone and purse in the other. I manage to somehow lock the door, but not before I’m met with a pair of electric blue eyes. “I..Ivar. W...What are you doing here?” I manage to say through my shock. 

“You haven't returned any of my calls or messages since that night (y/n). I wouldn't admit this to anyone else, but I was genuinely worried about you.” He trails off as he says the last part whilst avoiding my gaze. “Ive just had a lot on my mind, Ivar. Im sorry.” I say looking anywhere except his eyes, knowing full well the effect they had on me. In a flash Ivar stepped away from the limousine, took my coat and placed it on his arm and grabbed my hand dragging me towards it. “Ivar what are you doing my Uber’s here.” “I gave him 100 bucks and sent it away. You're coming with me.” He whispers the last part close to my ear before shoving me inside the limo. His tone of voice wasn't all the way warm, it had hints of his icy personality in them and made it hard to breathe for me.

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The car ride was awkward and filled with lots of tension. Ivar tried multiple times to start a conversation with me, but I paid him no mind. I sat as far away as possible from him, I could swear that there were times where I thought that I would fall out the door. His hands would “accidentally” (as he said) wander all over my legs, tracing patterns and ever so often trailing even higher. It took everything in me to  ignore his advances, and he knew very well the effects his touch had on me. His mere touch created a pool of wetness down there and the bastard knew it. Before his hand could go any further, the view of a great mansion surrounded by nothing but trees caught my eye. “Woah, that's huge.” I said as I looked out the window. “And its all yours (y/n), if you’d just have me.” Ivar says as he turns my head and stares into my (e/c) eyes. Getting lost in his electric blue orbs I lose all sense of why I was upset at him. It’s as if it’s only us two and the whole world disappeared when I look at him. Before either one of us could act upon our feelings once again, we’re interrupted by the driver as he pulls up in front of the house. “Oh for fucks sake! Someone is always interrupting us!” Ivar screams out, startling me a little as his eyes began to glow. His sudden outburst made me want to run away, but also made me feel as if I should have calmed him down.  Ivar turns to me and he just stares, no sudden movements or words just a blank stare. In seconds Ivar is out of the car and opening the door for me. If I hadnt known that he was a vampire I could've sworn that it had all been a fix of my imagination and that he truly wasnt there.

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As Ivar led from the limo inside the mansion, I couldnt help but admire the artwork and intricate design of his house. It was something truly unexpected from him. Once inside the ballroom Ivar had disappeared, I guess to greet everyone and say hello to his family. Whom I know he hasn't seen for the longest time. I however, am very overwhelmed and I think it may have to do with the fact that everybody’s eyes are on me. I don't do very well in public scenarios like this one and all the attention is making me a little sick. There was security all over the place and although intimidating I knew that I had to find a washroom as quickly as possible, so I could lock myself in there all night. The bodyguard didn't even speak, he just pointed towards the stairs and went back to acting as if I wasnt there. Shrugging it off I make my way up the stairs only to find a corridor with an exceptional amount of doors. Internally cursing myself I make my way down and knock on every door, but they're all locked. I almost gave up until I saw the double doors on the right. Obviously this couldn't be bathroom, but at this point I didn't care, I just had to find a place to stay till it was time to go. 

As I opened the double doors Im greeted by an awfully dark lit room, with intricate black designs. The cravings on the bed posts and the paintings around are those of ancient nordic runes, something that led me to believe that this might have been Ivar’s room. I knew of his great admiration foe his background, he loved anything that had to do with nordic beliefs and ancient gods. Making may way inside Im transfixed by all the artwork and details around me that I fail to acknowledge the presence that lies in the corner of the room. “So, I seem you've made yourself acquainted with my room already, (y/n)” Ivar says as he walks out of the shadows with his crutches? “Oh my God, Ivar are you okay? I literally left you for less than an hour and you've already gone an injured yourself! Wait, I dont mean to sound like a bitch/ignorant or anything, but why do you have crutches? Aren't like vampires supposed to be like physically invincible?” I said all in one breath, as Ivar just cocked his head to the side and stared at me. “You honestly believe everything that the media tells you, dont you?” Point taken, all I knew about vampires were form shows, movies and books that were then turned into movies or shows. “Anyway, before I became a vampire, I was actually a viking. Hence all the nordic runes everywhere and the massive tattoo on my chest and back. My family was very rich and my father Ragnar was king. However, unlike my siblings I was born without function in my legs. Which is why I use those metal braces in the corner over there while I'm in public, and these only around people I trust.” He says moving closer to me. “Now, tell me as to what drew you to come in to my room without me, (Y/n).” Ivar says as he draws my name longer than he has to, in a very sensual tone that makes my knees tremble.

“(y/n), give in. Dont fight it, we were meant to be. You're the reason I can finally feel alive. If it weren't for you, I probably would've kept roaming this world with no sense of purpose. I know you feel this connection. So once again , will you let me take care of you?” And in that moment all senses had been thrown out the window.

Ivar closed the gap with his hot mouth against yours. You gasped as you felt the heat spiral through you, as you ran your fingers through his soft locks. Throwing the crutches to the side Ivar manages to pick you up the hips and deepens the kiss. The sensual dance between your tongue and his is soon over as you cave in to his dominance and let his explore your mouth, slowly with deliberate movements. “Ahhhh...” A moan escapes your lips as his lips move down to your neck. “Since I saw you in that dress earlier tonight, it took everything in me to not act on impulse.” Making his way to the bed, Ivar lays you gently on the back satin sheets and holds himself up as his roam over your body in admiration. Ivar then looks at you for permission as his fingers begin unlacing and unzipping your dress. As Ivar kisses along to every spot that is unveiled to him, goosebumps begin to raise along your skin. You had longed for this moment for awhile, but had denied yourself of the pleasure due to your fear. Oh how stupid could I have been you thought to yourself as you relish in the pleasure that this man brought you every time he kissed and caressed you. “You're so beautiful...” Ivar says as he touches you with reverent fingers, as he begins caressing that part of your body that is not very often explored.

His fingers begin tracing the inside of my hips as his head dips down to my flower. Ivar takes my clit into his mouth and gently bites it, bringing a pleasure that I cannot describe. My hips buck up to him on their own accord asking for more. But he holds me down and brings his face up to mine. His intense gaze had distracted me for a second as his ministrations towards my clit were over. But before I could beg him and ask him for more, it was as fi Ivar had already beat me to it. In a flash he had dipped and curled 2 of his massive fingers into my hole. Pumping them in at an alarmingly fast rate. “I..Ivar, that feels so good!” I manage to say through my moans that are increasingly louder as I throw my head back from all this pleasure. Ivar’s pace becomes steady and his lips are now focused on my right breast, kissing and caressing it as if it were his favourite thing in the world. My hands uncurl form the sheets and move towards his head caressing it and then bringing it up so that I could kiss him. This time I wanted to show him that I too cared for him. And all that fear had been washed away, this man had been everything to me the minute I started working for him and Would be damned if I let him get away. Vampire or not! 

Bringing him in for a kiss Ivar tries to take control and dominate again, but this time I would be in control. I manage to shock Ivar with the lack of submission that he’s used to seeing from me. I use this to my advantage and flip us over. Trying to not hurt him in the process. I break apart our kiss and stare deeply into his eyes as our heave breaths begin to entangle with each other and become one. I slowly remove his fingers from my hole, much to his dismay. And before he could protest I place my finger to his lips. “You've shown me how much you care for me. Time and time again Ivar. Let me show you that I care too.” At this his eyes hold admiration, surprise, and hints uncertainty. Making my way down his body, I leave trail of kisses form his chest all the way down to his legs. Taking my time kissing every part of them and staring into his eyes with love and tenderness, which he mirrors in his gaze towards me. I then make my way up to his long and already hard cock. Oozing with loads of precum.  Licking the excess I take as much as I can into my mouth as I wrap my hangs around the base his very thick and long shaft. Pumping and bobbing my head I can feel and hear Ivar’s pleasure. His hands wrap around my (h/l)(h/c) hair and his hips thrust forward. I can see that he is reaching his high and before I could make him cum, he pulls out of my mouth. “I’d like to cum inside you, if you'd let me (y/n)” He says as his hands pull my face into a heated kiss.

Climbing on top of him I go to position myself on his member. However, Ivar flips us around so that he is the one on top. I could only look at him in shock for a second before my eyes roll back as I feel him thrust into me with one swift movement. My hands wrap around his torso, and claw at his back from the overwhelming sense of pleasure. Our moans become a melody to my ears, but soon I can feel myself reaching that high. “Ivar.....Im gonna” “I know baby, me too.” And just like that with a few more of his powerful thrusts Ivar and I reach our edge. Ivar and I stare into each others eyes with admiration and love. My hands without thought brush the strands from his hair away from his sweaty face. “Dont leave me ever again (y/n), I mean it. Those weeks that went by were probably the hardest of my life.” He breathes out as he caresses my face and body so gently, as if he were thinking that I would just vanish right there. “I would never think of leaving you again, ever. Im your aphrodisiac after all. What would you do without me?” And without a care in the world we lied in each others arms whilst the party roared downstairs, and the host nowhere to be found.

[kristallioness]

2016 | 2017 | 2018

*quietly sneaks back in*... Happy New THIS Year, my dear followers! In Estonia, we have this saying that if you wish someone a 'happy new year' after Three Kings' Day (the 6th of January), you gotta have a bottle of alcohol with you and give them a drink. *lol*

Anyways, I would like to apologize for the sudden disappearance that happened prior to Christmas. I was just busy travelling back home for the holidays, unpacking and putting away my stuff, watching some great, traditional movies or shows on TV, and most importantly, working on those 2 latest masterpieces that I posted (which barely got 30 notes each.. *sigh*).

But as you can (and probably will) see, the year of the yellow earth pig (i.e. my dad's year) was a rollercoaster of emotions and accomplishments, or lacking thereof.

My creative side seems to have suffered the most due to lack of leisure time. I only managed to finish 3 full digital drawings and left behind several sketches or unfinished WIPs (2 of which are revealed here under the months of June and November for the first time, I intend to finish the Korrasami one btw). At least I got to start 2020 with a completed drawing on the very 1st day, ha-ha! Perhaps that's a good omen for this year?

If so, then I hope I'll find the time to finish the rest of the 2019 Inktober prompts, since I only did 4/31 this past October (even though I'd thought of ideas for all of them). I brought all the necessary drawing utensils and sheets of paper with me, so whenever I'm in the mood, I'll try to sketch another one.

*calculates for the nth time*.. I wrote 18,110 words worth of fanfiction, plus 820 words for the UYLD prompts (making the total 18,930). Technically, you can count another 8k+ in there, since it comes from that unfinished story (of Aang taking care of a flu-ridden Katara, as illustrated by the September sketch), which I haven't finished within the last 4 months or so. Plus, I barely wrote 1/5 of the amount compared to 2018.. *hides in shame*

Then again, I was an excellent pupil for picking up an actual book and reading through 150+ pages (which means I have ~300 pages to go). I'm talking about the new Kyoshi novel that came out. As I once said, I haven't voluntarily read a book in years make that 2 years ago (most of the reading I've done in my life is either Tom & Jerry comics, now the Avatar comic trilogies and art books as well as fanfiction online, or compulsory reading during school). But this novel is freaking fantastic superb!

Not only that, I bought all the new comic trilogies and managed to read them through. Damn, did they give me feels.. especially "Ruins of the Empire" (ngl I squeed so hard when I saw the Korrasami farewell kiss on the 1st page of the 2nd part). I can't wait to read the 3rd part this year!

However, I failed to rewatch Avatar last year, and I haven't seen Korra since.. 2016, I believe? Wow, that's 4 whole years.. But I intend to fix that mistake starting from 2020. Hopefully I'm in the mood to start my rewatch this weekend tonight. *fingers crossed*

But as I said, I had much less time to focus on my hobbies since 2019 was the year for finally moving on with my life (sort of, I'm still working on it). I still remember how down I'd been feeling for a while and how valid those emotions really were. The first quarter of the year (+ like a month or two) was a continuous descent into desperation and feelings of utter failure, which already started around the 2nd half of 2018 and only continued to deepen around that time.

Everything began to change when I was first chosen to be part of a 2-month summer internship in an IT company, and I had to start building a new nest in a new location in Tallinn this May. And now, I feel like I've hit the jackpot by getting a permanent job in another IT company this October.

I got the opportunity to work in two different fields, in two different teams within a year. I met some awesome colleagues (a lot of whom are foreigners) and got the chance to really put my English skills to the test.

Thanks to the new job, I also had to go to a free health check, which went really-really well. Despite my nervousness in the beginning, I feel much more relaxed about my physical (and mental) health, cause the results showed that everything's okay (something I'd been worried about since March 2017).

Speaking of health or staying healthy, there were a few sports events that I went to, too. Our team held the first winter team event (it was the first one for me, at least) by going to do archery in a range on the outskirts of the capital.

I watched the football match between 2 teams of our local league at my hometown together with my dad on his birthday. Our home team won the match and came in 4th place overall in the league this year, which is their best result so far (I'm really proud!). And merely days before I started work, I visited the Tallinn International Horse Show for the first time (also with my dad). I last got to watch horses jump over fences or dance to their musical programs ~ 10 years ago, and I loved it!

Event-wise 2019 was pretty full of them. As has become tradition, I went to the Defence Forces parade on our 101st Independence Day (which seemed rather bleak compared to the centennial, even more so since we didn't have ANY snow at the time).

What will hopefully become new traditions, I visited the television tower on the Restoration of Independence Day (where Uku Suviste gave a free concert in the evening), and went to the Veteran's Rock concert (to honour our war veterans) on our Freedom Square on the 23rd of April (since I'm residing in the capital now, I should be able to go again this year).

To continue with the centennial celebrations (yes, some things are STILL turning 100), I saw and explored inside the armoured train no. 7 called "Wabadus" ("Freedom") in the Baltic Station. This armoured train was one of the keys that led our country to victory during the War of Independence from 1918-1920.

There was an even bigger (150th) anniversary to celebrate in the beginning of July, when I attended our Song and Dance Festival. This was a really important, if not the biggest event of the year. I intend to make a longer post about my experience, cause it's something that you foreigners need to see for yourself. I can't simply describe or put it into words, I have to show you some videos and photos.

But while we're on the topic of concerts, I should mention that I went to 2 more at the beginning of June - Bon Jovi and Sting - as well as 2 that were part of Christmas tours in December - Elina Nechayeva and Rolf Roosalu.

Besides that, I went to 6 different festivals, half of which I'd been to several times before, such as the Türi Flower Fair, Jäneda Farm Days (where I went on my first helicopter ride for my 25th birthday present) and the Christmas market in the Old Town of Tallinn.

The other half is comprised of festivals that I'd been considering going to for a while, or which took place for the first time. The latter applies to the Black Food Festival, whereas the "Valgus Kõnnib" ("Wandering Lights") and the duck rally, both of which took place in Kadriorg, fall under the first category.

The duck rally is a charity event held in the beginning of June. Regular people can buy at least one (or several) rubber bath duckies for different prices, which will then be dumped into a tiny stream that'll carry them towards the finish line. This event has grown more popular each year, and the money the Estonian Association of Parents of Children with Cancer (sorry, long name in English!) collects is donated to the Cancer Treatment Fund.

*wipes forehead*.. Phew! I'm surprised, that's a whole lotta positivity for 2019. I think there's one more important, but seriously negative topic I haven't covered yet, but I feel should be mentioned and explained.

When it comes to politics, 2019 was a complete disaster for us. EKRE (Eesti Konservatiivne Rahvaerakond in Estonian, or Estonia's Conservative People's Party in English) i.e. our populist/nazi/pro-Trump party is in the government as of April 2019, thanks to 100,000+ idiots (out of our population of 1.3 million) who voted for them and gave them 19/101 seats in the Parliament.

No, I am NOT going to apologize for calling them a nazi party, because their main leaders have repeatedly supported ideology that's common to nazis (they use aggressive rhetoric, blame the media for making them look bad, downgrade women, minorities, are racist, anti-semitic etc...). And I will not apologize in front of the people who voted for them, because "thanks" to this, EKRE has dragged our country's reputation straight through a mud puddle (not to mention the scandals that have accompanied 5 of their ministers, 3 of who have THANKFULLY stepped down from their positions) and.. *swears like the British*.. it's BLOODY EMBARRASSING.

I am done being nice, I have at least some kind of prejudice about anyone who supports them or their ideals. And I will certainly not let Estonia end up like America. So that is why I participated in two protest events against EKRE and our current government (because the 2 other parties, who were willing to form the coalition with them, are spineless jellyfish that simply seek to hold onto their current positions of power). I'm willing to take bets as to when our government falls (the sooner the better).

*shakes off the frustration*.. Brrr! So besides that, I guess the only downside to 2019 was my spare time falling back in the list of priorities (which shows in the empty square of July).

2020 is gonna be the year of the white metal rat. I can only hope (and take action so) that it'll be just as eventful, and much more creative than 2019. Thank you all for following me (or lurking anonymously) for so long, especially to the bloggers who've offered me support through better or worse! *raises a glass* Here's to 2020!.. *sip*

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

Fire and ice gyroids

We’re on the hunt for gyroids - fire red gyroids to be exact! I’m with Rika and Elowyn in the Icy Cascades for the Fire and Ice Exhibition, which takes place every two years. 

Along with the gyroid hunt, there’s also exhibits where we get to learn about various inventions as well as a workshop where we can build our own machines. Not only the gear is fascinating to look at, the red and gold aesthetics are eye catching as well. It never fails to amaze me what you can craft with gyroids.

What’s important to note about these gyroids is that they need to be handled with care. Don’t let the ice it’s encased in fool you - touch it and you’ll burn. The ice in the Cascades is hardcore because it never melts - or so they claim. You won’t freeze your fingers off if you touch it and it chips away somewhat easily with an ice pick or shovel, but it sure can withstand a lot of heat. The texture’s like a smooth glass that was put in the freezer minus the condensation.

So because we don’t want any burnt hands - or other body parts that might come in contact with a gyroid - safety equipment is important. That’s why Rika and Elowyn arrived at the camp yesterday so we can gather what we have and craft what we don’t to prepare for the event. 

Ever since the cherry blossom festival in Corentine, we’ve been trying to make plans for a get together. Unfortunately some of the stuff we planned fell through at the last minute because we’re all busy people. Rika’s doing gigs for various events as well as writing another book and Elowyn’s got volleyball and classes - even during the festival we didn’t really have any time to sit and chat because they were busy working on the stands.

Finally, after what felt like forever, we’re hanging out on a camping adventure. And what better way to catch up than with a gyroid event?

Rika and Elowyn are cousins, though they’re more like sisters. Both have been raised by their Aunt Bice along with their cousins and Elowyn’s brother after their parents killed each other during a family conference. Even after over eleven years, it’s still one of those stories the media brings up once in a while. For the surviving Sala family members, a once prestigious name had become a stigma.

The Salas were a powerful family who ruled Thundering Shores, a remote peninsula outside the cities of Queenstown and Arcania. Olivier Sala, the patriarch, was said to singlehandedly drag the family from being dirt poor to filthy rich. Not surprisingly he was also a classist, racist, misogynist, abusive, and entitled asshole who only looked out for himself.

His son Klaus took over as head of the family and he was an even bigger dick than his father. He had (at least) four heirs in line - Ernest, Audrey, Cornelius, and Maria. By some miracle, his grandkids turned out to be decent people so maybe the parents (or more likely their spouses) did something right.

To break it down:

Ernest - the eldest of the four heirs. He married Bice Leone (aka the good one who deserved so much better). They have one daughter, Beatrice, who’s the third oldest out the cousins but fifth in line as successor to the family fortune.

Audrey - the eldest daughter who’s a cutthroat CEO. She married Royce, who took her family name to elevate his status. They have one son, Adrien, the oldest of all the cousins, who look up to him a lot.

Cornelius - the second son, a serial womanizer. His first marriage was to a woman who deserved much better. They have one son, Noel, second oldest of the cousins. Right after his wife died, he married Liselotte, who was his mistress for several years and Elowyn was born months later.

Maria - the youngest and the only one who never married. She had an affair with a business partner who walked out on her when she was pregnant with Rika. Since then she held a grudge against her daughter and took her anger out on her. Even after what her mother put her through, Rika sometimes feels bad for her.

On the night of the murders, the family met up for their annual conference to discuss business matters. Klaus would manipulate the adults by pitting them against each other, which is how he always got what he wanted. That year, he revealed that he had a hidden gold stash and left a bunch of cryptic riddles for the adults to figure out. Whoever found it would be named head of the family.

No one knows who found the gold first but the four siblings were fighting over it. Then things got physical, guns were involved, and in minutes most of the adults were dead. Bice was badly wounded but managed to save Adrien, Noel, Beatrice, Rika, and Elowyn, whose lives were hanging by a thread.

In the aftermath that followed, Bice did everything she could to keep the media out. She and the kids recovered physically, though the scars remained. Since Noel, Rika, and Elowyn had no relatives who wanted to take them in, Bice adopted them. Adrien moved in with Bice as well because there was no reason for him to go back where he wasn’t welcome. When things finally calmed down, the surviving Salas moved to Corentine, Bice’s hometown.

The family massacre is one of those things that’ll always be hanging over their heads. It’s amazing how insensitive the media can be, especially since the survivors were victims. The fact that a lot of news articles have to point out how messed up their family was while also talking about their achievements is infuriating. Like, this is about them, not their parents, so shut up about that traumatic incident that they’re clearly not comfortable talking about and let them live their lives.

In the years that followed, Adrien became a talent agent, first for Noel and Beatrice, later to hundreds of clients. He also runs the business/management side of Viola-Francois, where he helped many promising actors and directors find their way. Beatrice is in a punk rock band called Lighting Rage, has made a name for herself in wrestling and voice acting, and currently working on her first manga. Noel is an actor known for starring in suspense, comedies, and action movies as well as a dancer and aspiring director set to make his directorial debut later this year. All three live in different parts of the world but they make time in their busy lives to visit Corentine once in a while.

As for Rika, she moved to Peace Coast Island for college, where she was offered a spot in Jamie’s entourage and is currently a visual arts major. To deal with loneliness when he mother disappeared for days at a time, Rika turned to magic, which creeped her mother out. She still practices witchcraft, though more as a hobby. She’s more interested in party tricks because it’s less dangerous, plus she has a lot of fun showing off. There is talk about a possible TV show with Rika playing hilarious magical pranks on unsuspecting people, which is totally in her element so that’s something to look forward to. Rika’s also a published author, having released a couple graphic novels and in the early stages of writing another one.

And there’s Elowyn, who’s currently in the process of applying to colleges. She’s not sure exactly where she wants to go yet, but she’s considering joining Rika on the island since there’s a good athletic program there. She’s interested in athletics and media so it’s a good fit for her. Elowyn’s also looking into Spectrum University, Seashore Path College, Providence Isle University, and Mercury College.

Rika and Elowyn are two people you’d want to bring along to a gyroid hunt, especially one that involves ice that doesn’t melt and fire hot gyroids. Elowyn’s great at parkour so she can scale mountains and trees like it’s nothing. Rika’s good at spotting gyroids as well as coming up with creative ideas on how to get gyroids in difficult to reach places. 

When we got all the gyroids there are to find, it was time to get crafty. I made a four seated bike and a latte machine, Rika built a game boy and a unicycle, and Elowyn created a camera and butterfly fairy lights. 

After building our crafts, we spent the evening looking at the various exhibitions, which was fascinating! Elowyn got to use her camera to take a bunch of cool pics with a warm, vintage-y filter, adding to the overall charm of the atmosphere. Then we had dinner at the Ice Cocoa Diner, which is known for their decadent churros y chocolate. Before it got too late, we hit the road and got back to the campsite by around 10 and spent the rest of the night chilling and having a good time.

Of course, we brought back a bag full of (properly stored) gyroids for Reese and Cyrus to work their magic on. I can’t wait to see what they come up with!

[audreyxuan]

Body and Biology: Cross-Cultural Depictions of the Human Form in Cyberpunk Media

My project will concern the portrayal and treatment of the human body in cyberpunk media, particularly the role of body modification and biotechnology. I will define the history and origins of cyberpunk, a dystopian subgenre of science fiction borne out of paranoia around technology, capitalism, and globalisation. The human body has always played a significant role in the genre, as characters adapt or themselves to reach a perfect ideal, whether for weaponisation or aesthetic self-expression. This paper studies different approaches to the idea of humanity and whether it is inherently tethered to the physical, organic human body. My project covers a total of six media, three from Western countries and three from Eastern countries: Blade Runner (U.S./Hong Kong), Altered Carbon (U.S.), Gunnm (Japan), Ghost in the Shell (Japan), ACRONYM (Germany), and Comme des Garçons (Japan). The first four sources are all filmic media (movies or series) and are listed chronologically to show the role that each one had on the following. The final two sources are fashion labels that have been influenced by the form-consciousness ethos of cyberpunk, and recontextualise the body in two different ways: deconstruction and protection. I will explain the sociological and historical reasons why each media addresses the concept of humanity differently, especially in relation to concepts such as globalisation, free trade, and cultural diffusion. By exploring the idea of the body in relation to technology and modification, we can learn more about what it means to be human.

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that operates in a futuristic, dystopian sphere. The movement originated from the New Wave sci-fi movement, which sought to dismantle the lowbrow B-movie myths the genre had become affiliated with in the 1950s. New Wave prioritised deep philosophical and narrative concepts over sensationalist storylines and genre clichés, such as the monster movie or the damsel in distress (Parker 2011). The late 1970s saw the start of a technological revolution, as mass-produced computers were offered to the public in 1977 (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2020). With unprecedented technological advancement, as with anything new and strange, came a healthy--though some may argue exaggerated--degree of skepticism and distrust. 

Another important factor was that the birth of the subgenre came at the climax of the Cold War. The United States and Russia waged a war of beliefs, battling for ideological control; worldwide economic power and political systems would be determined by this outcome. “It is no coincidence that cyberpunk came of age in the era where capitalism was moving towards global dominance, culminating in its symbolic triumph at the fall of the Berlin Wall,” writes Paul Walker-Emig for The Guardian (2018). Capitalism’s laissez-faire, non-interventionist policy enabled international trade, leading to the rise of globalism and cultural diffusion. It also, however, allowed for socio-economic inequality and gross exploitation, reinforcing frustration among the lower- and middle-class.

The intellectual elements of New Wave sci-fi, the advent of wide-spread technology, and globalisation as a result of capitalism all combined in a perfect storm of paranoia and cynicism, giving birth to the cyberpunk subgenre.

One of the defining tropes of cyberpunk media is its relationship with the human body. The nature of that relationship can fluctuate, but it’s often obsessive and damaging. Whether it’s the anti-establishment sentiment of personal expression or the militaristic goal of creating a human weapon, bodies are enhanced, implanted, and amputated to meet a “perfect” ideal. Whatever the rationale, all modification is derived from an inherent dissatisfaction with the natural human form. This project will examine the portrayal and treatment of the human body in cyberpunk media, particularly the role of body modification and biotechnology. I will consider both Western and Asian depictions and explain the sociological reasoning behind their choices. Finally, we will move past filmic mediums and into the world of fashion, exploring how cyberpunk and its obsession with the body has filtered into the realm of our reality. 

Because of its dominance in the Cold War and its already-established film industry, the United States became one of the prime exporters of cyberpunk cinema. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, released in 1982, is considered to be one of the first cyberpunk films. The movie follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter tasked with killing androids known as “replicants”, originally created to populate newly-colonised planets. After some lead a violent uprising demanding freedom, all replicants are outlawed and ordered dead. Deckard describes the replicants as “more human than human and sometimes the ‘more’ turned out to be a problem” (Fancher 1980). If the replicants are sentient beings with who can think (and perhaps feel) like humans, should they be deprived of rights simply because they do not inhabit an organic human body? The Voight-Kampff machine Deckard uses to determine who is a replicant and who is not is about as reliable as a modern polygraph test, or perhaps even less so. In other words, it provides no safe answers about one’s true nature. The lines between human and robot are so blurred, some fans and scholars have adopted the idea that Deckard himself is a replicant, possibly without even him knowing (Organ et al. 12). 

While Blade Runner takes place in the U.S., there are clear Asian influences, from the visuals to the production (American Film Institute). The city is described as “a futuristic Los Angeles, modeled after the Hong Kong cityscape”, but Scott avoids appropriating imagery for mere aesthetic merit (Zhu 2016). Hong Kong, with its colonial history and fractured national identity, was specifically chosen for its relevance to Blade Runner’s story. In his case study “Hong Kong’s Influence on Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Cyberpunk Cinema”, Ray Zhu writes:

A typical Hong Kong street scene represented in the protracted scenes of cityscape in Blade Runner serve to illustrate a society confused about its own identity, about to implode at any moment. In Blade Runner, the conflict and tension between the Replicants, or cyborgs mimicking humans, and people of flesh and blood parallel the modern day consequences of increasingly expansive consumerism and intrusive technology encroaching on people’s lives. (2016)

After losing funding from an American production company, the movie was backed in part by Hong Kong producer Sir Run Run Shaw, making it a joint United States/Hong-Kong production (Sammon 64-67). Even though the film is helmed by an Englishman, written by Americans, and stars American and European actors, it’s interesting to consider how cross-cultural diffusion had a role in the production of the film itself. 

Much of the film is spent trying to pin down notions of what it means to be human, and a sense of uncertainty is woven throughout. Numerous rewrites and international releases have resulted in seven different versions of the film being released, leaving audiences questioning what the “real” ending is. In one iteration, the movie ends with Deckard and his replicant love-interest Rachael as they choose to begin their life on the run from authorities, their fate unknown (Grab 2013). This sentiment runs parallel to the narrative themes of Blade Runner: questioning what is authentic and what is not, never providing any definitive answers.

Gunnm, a 1993 anime adaptation of manga series Battle Angel Alita, plays with similar ideas of characters being defined by the nature of their bodies. Gally, known as Alita in some versions, is a dilapidated cyborg discovered by cyberdoctor Ido. Not even two minutes in, Ido proclaims “She’s human all right”, despite looking very clearly un-human; she has no limbs, only a disembodied torso of metal and wires (Gunnm 0:01:50). After her first fight, which she ends by dismembering two rival cyborgs, Ido rushes over to her, asking “Gally, are you alright? Is your body damaged?” (Gunnm 0:13:56). Her body is his primary concern. In every aspect except physically, Gally is human. She talks like a teenage girl, thinks like one, laughs like one. But Ido, her protector and father figure, sees her as a body, a weapon--something that happens to have consciousness, but never qualifies as fully human.

In 1995, Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell was released. One of Japan’s seminal cyberpunk films, it takes place in a world where people can implant or replace their body parts with cybernetic tech. Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg police agent in Neo-Tokyo, tasked with hunting down the Puppet Master, a hacker who infiltrates cyborgs without their knowledge. The Puppet Master appeals to Major as a fellow cyber-being, leaving her questioning her worth and humanity. By the end, he convinces her to upload his mind into hers, pooling their consciousness and knowledge and effectively betraying her human superiors. 

By the mid-90s, Ghost in the Shell was able to touch on new topics and new tech; during the genre’s inception in the early eighties, notions of Internet networks and advanced AI were still too abstract to be analysed. “The rapid development of artificial intelligence [...] reveals the identity crisis of mankind as they are developing a more close-knit connection with machine over time,” write Hui-tong Zhou and Jing An (136). They explain how the “Ship of Theseus” problem applies to Major’s artificially-implanted memories: “if all of parts of physical body are superseded by machines, and if the memory of one is completely distorted or disappeared, is this human still the original one?” (Zhou and An 138). If her body parts (including her brain) were replaced with technology, piece-by-piece, is Major human? Her ultimate decision to join the Puppet Master suggests not. Ghost in the Shell debates not only the difference between how we should treat robots versus humans, but the essential differences in defining the two.

Almost four decades after Blade Runner, Altered Carbon (2018 to present) was aired, taking many of its stylistic and thematic cues from Scott’s masterpiece. In the future, human consciousness can be uploaded onto biotech devices called stacks, which can be implanted in any human “sleeve”. “Your body is not who you are,” speaks an unnamed narrator in voiceover. “You shed it like a snake sheds its skin.” (S1E1 “Out of the Past” 0:06:55). Like Blade Runner, it takes place in an endlessly-rainy, neon-drenched, globalised metropolis called Bay City, where the main currency is UN credits and characters often switch into Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, or German. The world is highly-stratified, as the rich live in towering skyscrapers far from the streets and slums of the poor. Activist groups demand rights for human sleeves, who can be bought and sold like slaves for billionaires who want a new body. Like modern-day cosmetic surgery, it’s an example of how capitalism lets the rich modify themselves to fit beauty standards. 

Protagonist Takeshi Kovacs suffers from paranoia and PTSD, feeling a disconnect to his new sleeve and seeing his old face in the mirror. He was born as a person of Asian descent, played by Korean-American actor Will Yun Lee, but is resleeved into the body of a white man (Swedish-American Joel Kinnaman). Changing one’s physical identity is perhaps a more interesting concept than the straightforward physical immortality that the stack technology provides. Creator Laeta Kalogridis addresses the fact that switching bodies has particularly important implications for transgender and genderfluid people.“This kind of technology creates interesting intersections between your idea of your physical self and your idea of your inner or spiritual self, or your idea of being fluid in some way, certainly the idea of reassigning your gender,” says Kalogridis in an interview with The Wrap (Maas 2018). The series employs decades-old themes of identity, globalisation, and capitalism that are still, and perhaps painfully, relevant. Paying homage to cyberpunk’s body-obsessive origins but with an added social context, Altered Carbon covers new, socially-conscious ground in the genre.

The conscious examination of the relationship between the body and technology has transcended non-filmic mediums and found its way into various artistic disciplines. From Japanese illustrator Hajime Sorayama’s hyper-sexualised humanoid robots to upcoming biotech-themed video game Cyberpunk 2077, the genre’s unique aesthetic cues have been embraced by every corner of the design and media industry. But perhaps most fascinating is how cyberpunk, given its fixation on the human form, has been appropriated by the fashion world, from high fashion to streetwear. 

Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons, founded by Rei Kawakubo, is known for “deconstruction and silhouettes that reimagine the human form” (Smith 2017). They are not so much clothes as pieces of art, “objects for the body” that redefine our anatomy (Bolton 157). Her items are often abstract to the point of being unwearable, like an oddly-shaped plaid dress from her Spring/Summer 1997 collection “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body”. This collection was described as “a reorganization of the body, where the symmetry of desirable curves is mocked, literally pushed aside and distorted by tumorous lumps and bumps” (de Perthuis 9). Other releases were driven by similarly disruptive ideas: “skirts and jackets were made entirely of shoulder segments [...] garments came with ‘spares’--one dress would have two more hanging from the shoulders, and jackets had extra sleeves” (de Perthuis 9). Her anti-fashion ethos seeks to evolve notions of clothing, and how it is more powerful as a tool of expression and emotion than as mere visually-appealing aesthetic. “Clothes provide a physical and symbolic barrier between ourselves and the world. Linked to gendered, cultural and social identities, they connect us to others, but can also separate and protect us from their gaze,” writes professor of design and communications Karen de Perthuis (11-12). By challenging the very definition of fashion itself, Kawakubo subverts not only beauty standards but body standards.  

While Kawakubo supposedly works in a self-proclaimed “void of fashion history”, much of what we see on the runways is often a reflection of current trends in underground fashion (de Perthuis 10). In the past few years, independent streetwear brands have tended towards utilitarian clothing that values practicality over all else, owing much of its aesthetic to the world of cyberpunk. Techwear and tactical wear is nearly always black (though may feature shades of grey or camouflage), accented with straps and buckles and made of durable materials like nylon, mesh, and paracord. Popular items include cargo pants, waterproof Gore-Tex jackets, face masks, utility vests, and hooded parkas. German fashion label ACRONYM is one of the leading brands in the techwear scene. The brand’s proprietary features sound like science fiction, like “Sound Forcelock - A hidden magnetic function near the collar to hold earbuds in place while wearing the jacket” or “EscapeZip - Allows the wearer to quickly unzip the jacket with one quick pull” (Li 2016). The label’s unofficial mission statement is “maximum utility and a futuristic aesthetic that blends militaristic designs with a sleek science fiction minimalism”, and their promotional videos use “stylized sci-fi films and anime [as] major sources of inspiration” (Li 2016). ACRONYM’s integration of technology into clothing serves as a form of modification; while not implanted into the body itself, the tech enables and enhances the wearer to move differently and perform better.

Many techwear pieces are reminiscent of cyberpunk’s combat-ready costumes; an ALYX chest rig wouldn’t look out of place on Ghost in the Shell’s Major. The popularity of this militaristic aesthetic, writes Tyler Watamanuk of SSENSE, “crest[s] on a backdrop of heightened conversations surrounding gun violence” (2020). The cargo pants, strappy harnesses, and combat boots remind Watamanuk of an infamous security camera still from the Columbine shooting. Utilitarian style “can trigger memories of terror and violence, fear and panic. [...] Ultimately, the poignancy of an aesthetic is informed by what we collectively associate it with” (Watamanuk 2020). Like Kawakubo’s work, utilitarian style uses clothes as objects to rework our physiques; rather than deconstruct the body, tactical wear armours and protects it. Labels like Comme des Garçons and ACRONYM ask wearers for permission to change their bodies, or sometimes demand it--by putting on a piece of clothing, you become something else.

Cyberpunk emerged in a time of uncertainty, exploring rapid globalisation, economic inequality, international trade, and cultural diffusion. Most importantly, though, it asks the most essential question: who is human, and who decides? Over the past forty years, both the West (Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, ACRONYM) and East (Battle Angel, Ghost in the Shell, Comme des Garçons) have grappled with this idea, each work influenced by the history of their regions. From Fritz Lang’s social drama Metropolis to Cold War allegory Invasion of the Body Snatchers, science fiction has always used fantastical settings to study the emotions, actions, and reactions of people in unprecedented situations. By studying the way we view the body, we can discover what it means to be strong, to be beautiful, to be human.

Works Cited

American Film Institute. “Blade Runner.” AFI Catalog of Feature Films, catalog.afi.com/Film/68260-BLADE-RUNNER.

Bolton, Andrew. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017.

de Perthuis, Karen. “Breaking the Idea of Clothes: Rei Kawakubo’s Fashion Manifesto.” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, 7 Jan. 2019, doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2018.1531621.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Personal computer.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 31 Jan. 2020, britannica.com/technology/personal-computer.

Fancher, Hampton. “Blade Runner.” 24 Jul. 1980, screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/Blade%20Runner.pdf.

Grab, Eiskaltes. “Blade Runner.” Movie Censorship, 7 Jun. 2013, movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=774077.

Gunnm: Battle Angel. Directed by Hiroshi Fukutomi, Madhouse, 1993, youtube.com/watch?v=tofSaLB9kwE.

Li, Rocky. “Master Class: ACRONYM.” Grailed, 30 Nov. 2016, grailed.com/drycleanonly/master-class-acronym.

Maas, Jennifer. “‘Altered Carbon’ Creator on How Show Could Examine LGBTQ Issues in Season 2.” The Wrap, 13 Feb. 2018, thewrap.com/altered-carbon-transgender-stacks-lgbt-laeta-kalogridis.

Organ, Michael K., Susan Jones, Anthony M. Rice, & Grant C. White. “Catching 'tears in the rain': Blade Runner and the archiving of memory and identity.” Australian Society of Archivists Conference: Archives in a Blade Runner Age, 2018, ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1734&context=asdpapers.

“Out of the Past”. Altered Carbon, season 1, episode 1, 2 Feb. 2018. Netflix, netflix.com/watch/80097693.

Parker, John R. “‘New Worlds’: One of the Most Influential Sci-Fi Magazines Returns This Fall.” Comics Alliance, 20 Aug. 2011, comicsalliance.com/new-worlds-magazine-returns.

Sammon, Paul M. Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. Dey Street Books, 2017.

Smith, Katie. “Comme des Garçons and the Kawakubo influence.” Edited, 4 May 2017, edited.com/resources/comme-des-garcons-influence.

Walker-Emig, Paul. “Neon and corporate dystopias: why does cyberpunk refuse to move on?” The Guardian, 16 Oct 2018, theguardian.com/games/2018/oct/16/neon-corporate-Dystopias-why-does-cyberpunk-refuse-move-on.

Watamanuk, Tyler. “Tactical Fashion: A Modern Love Story.” SSENSE, 9 Mar. 2020, ssense.com/en-us/editorial/fashion/tactical-fashion-a-modern-love-story.

Zhou, Hui-tong & Jing An. “How Cyborgs Define Themselves: On Ghost in the Shell.” International Conference on Education, Social Sciences and Humanities, 2018, pdfs.semanticscholar.org/81d9/6083bcaa47cfaa3768b3e994b238224e168e.pdf.

Zhu, Ray. “Case Study: Hong Kong’s Influence on Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Cyberpunk Cinema.” Medium, 31 Dec. 2016, medium.com/@ray.zhu/bridging-the-gap-sci-fi-cinema-and-depictions-of-hong-kong-sar-b15800678c29.

[bethkerring]

10 Tips on Writing Asexuality

It’s been a long, long twelve years since I first realized I was asexual.

I’m one of the fortunate ones that realized my lesser-known orientation without having to go through years of confusion, uncertainty, and experimentation (because while some might enjoy that, I can pretty much guarantee I wouldn’t have). I was fourteen when I first came across the term and thought it might apply to me, and shortly before I turned fifteen, I officially claimed it as my own.

A lot has changed since then. When I first came out, there was almost nothing out there for asexuals. There was the AVEN website, a few blog posts, and even fewer YouTube videos, but the word basically didn’t exist in common knowledge, even among people who identified as LGBTQ+. Any fiction that included ace characters was almost exclusively unconfirmed, and left up to fans to compile lists of evidence that a certain character was probably asexual—which was usually ignored by the majority of fans, who wanted to see the character in sexual situations, and often later brushed aside by the creators.

Now, asexuality is more and more recognized by the popular media and the general public. Visibility is still lacking, but we’re recognized by major LGBTQ+ organizations, represented (to a small extent) in Pride events, and increasingly represented as characters in TV shows, books, movies, etc. I’ve even found random strangers recognizing the asexual pride button on my purse—and I live in the Bible Belt.

And it’s a great feeling. Every time I see another ace character in popular media, I get a little burst of joy to see someone like me—at least in this one way, if not in others. I’m especially glad to see good representation, especially after years of representation that was questionable at best (Sherlock still comes to mind) and harmful at worst (does anyone remember that episode of House?). I’m also thrilled to see that non-asexual people are really interested in doing ace representation right and are reaching out to asexuals to get their take on what they want to see.

So I thought I would include my perspective on writing asexual characters, because frankly, everyone’s experience and viewpoint is a little difference, and I hope this conversation continues with as many diverse voices as possible.

I hope these tips are helpful and make you at least a little more confident about including ace characters in your own work!

1. Watch out for stereotypes, but don’t throw them out the window. This is almost certainly confusing, so let me explain: I often see people try so hard to avoid stereotypical traits in asexual characters that they forget that aces are incredibly diverse. Yes, not all asexuals are aromantic, but some are. Yes, not all asexuals hate close physical contact, but some do. Yes, not all asexuals are shy or socially awkward, but some are. Yes, not all asexuals have seventeen cats, but some do. Yes, not all asexuals are repulsed by sex, but some are. And the list goes on. You should absolutely be aware if a character trait you’ve chosen is stereotypical, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should avoid it, especially if you have more than one asexual character. Be aware of it, but focus on writing a well-rounded, realistic character over avoiding every stereotype in the book. No matter what trait it is, if you’re writing it well, chances are good there’s an asexual out there who will empathize with it.

2. Keep intersectionality in mind. Though, as I said, I’m absolutely thrilled to see more ace characters in media, I know there’s still a desperate need for more diverse examples of asexuality, especially those that take into account how people of different races, genders, abilities, national origins, religions, and ages—among other things—experience their asexuality. A man does not experience asexuality the same as a woman. A white person does not experience asexuality the same as people of other races—I can’t list them all here, but from what I’ve seen, every racial identity comes with stereotypes and prejudices that interact with asexuality differently. Someone’s religion might affect how they view their asexuality or how they’re viewed by their religious community, and someone’s asexuality might be brushed aside if they’re “too young,” “too old,” or have a disability. Personally, I am an able-bodied American white woman, so I can’t say a lot about this specifically, but please do your research on this aspect of their experience just like you would any other. It might not be what you’re expecting.

3. Don’t make asexuality their defining trait. Unless someone is an asexual activist (and these are valid characters!), and even if they are, they’ve probably got quite a few aspects of their life that have nothing to do with their orientation. An asexual doesn’t spend all day every day thinking about the fact that they don’t experience sexual attraction. It is, after all, the lack of an experience rather than the presence of one, and is therefore less likely to draw their attention at any given moment. Contrary to some people’s belief, asexuals don’t necessarily have “oodles of free time” since they don’t spend it thinking about sex—but they do have other things that interest them. They are full human beings, just as complex as anyone of any other orientation, and as a certain lesbian character from a TV show I’m fond of once said, “My sexuality is not the most interesting thing about me.”

4. Remember that there are many ways to “humanize” a character without giving them a love interest. This is one of those topics that isn’t exclusive to stories with asexual characters, but is still relevant to them. All too often, I’ve seen characters who seem cold, inhuman, or heartless made more “human” by falling in love, as if the ability to feel romantic and/or sexual attraction is what makes them “not a machine.” This idea goes back at least a century, to Arthur Conan Doyle stating that Sherlock Holmes was “as human as a Babbage’s calculating machine, and just as likely to fall in love.”

Let me make this very clear: a character is not inhuman because they don’t feel romantic or sexual love, and a character is not especially human simply because they do feel these things. Even if your character is not asexual, please don’t make the one thing that “humanizes” them be romantic/sexual attraction—and in the case of asexual characters, please don’t try to “humanize” them by giving them a romantic interest. Yes, asexuals can be romantic, aromantic, or anything in between, but romantic asexuals are no more human than aromantics. There are so many other ways to humanize someone: strong platonic attachment, caring for animals, passion for a social cause, love for the environment, and countless other possibilities. Obviously it’s completely okay for romantic or sexual attraction to be one of these things: but please don’t make it the only one.

5. Think about how they discovered their orientation. Even if your character has known they’re asexual for 50+ years, unless your story takes place in some great fictional society where non-straight orientations are openly welcomed and accepted as normal, how they figured out their asexuality is probably going to affect them—as well as when they figured it out. I discovered my own asexuality in my early teens, but I’ve seen people who didn’t discover the term until they were senior citizens, having felt alone and out of place their entire lives with no idea why. If they discovered it recently, especially after a long time of not understanding themself, they might still be figuring out exactly how they define their own identity.

6. Consider asexuality in the context of your character’s environment. Small-scale and large-scale. Where your character grows up and what environment they live in during the story makes a huge difference on how their asexuality is expressed, and this is true whether you’re writing historical fiction (where views of and experiences in asexuality are obviously very different) or whether you’re deciding if your character’s family is supportive. There’s an enormous spectrum of variation in this, so I won’t even try to go into the details, but keep in mind that whether your character is out, what sort of prejudice they face, and how they feel about their own orientation will all be greatly affected by the world they live in and the people they know.

7. Asexuality is not an illness—but that doesn’t mean life experiences can’t affect it. Remember the House episode I mentioned? For those that never saw it, the patient-of-the-day was an apparently ace woman, married to an apparently ace man, who goes to see Dr. House. House is convinced that no human could possibly be asexual, despite another character, Wilson, mentioning research validating the orientation. In the end, House discovers that the man has a brain tumor suppressing his sex drive and the woman has been faking her orientation to stay with her husband.

This is … extremely problematic for what I hope are obvious reasons. This led to a lot of families and friends of asexuals, who had previously been supportive, suddenly worrying that their loved ones had brain tumors. Obviously, if there is a genuine reason to suspect a medical issue (such as a sudden disappearance of sexual interest when it existed before), one should consult a doctor, but this episode presented only two cases of asexuality, one of which was “just an illness” and another of which was a lie. This led viewers to the same conclusion that House himself reached: that no healthy human being could possibly be asexual.

This is a very bad example of asexual representation, but it’s also worth mentioning that there are asexuals who view their asexuality as being affected by their life experiences, a specific diagnosis, or even a chronic illness, and as long as you do research beforehand into what sorts of experiences can contribute to someone’s identity, and don’t try to “cure” that character’s asexuality as part of your story, this is okay. Ideally, include more than one ace character as a way to make it clear to your readers that experiences differ, and that all roads to finding one’s identity are valid. Sexual orientation is unlikely to change and can never be “cured”—since it’s not an illness in itself—but that doesn’t mean the environment can’t affect it.

8. Exploration and questioning is okay. I also want to emphasize that it is completely okay to have a character that is questioning their sexuality, and either later decides that they are ace or decides that they are not ace. As long as asexuality is treated as a genuine orientation and not just a “symptom”—and again, ideally, more than one ace character is included at least briefly—a character realizing that asexuality isn’t the right identity for them, or only realizing such after exploring other identities, is fine. As mentioned above, the House episode did this very wrong, but as long as you are not “disproving” the asexuality of the only two ace characters in the show—especially when it’s disproved by a guy who believes asexuality is impossible/inhuman—and you are sensitive and respectful, I think this can be done without causing offense.

9. Remember that ace views of attraction can be different than non-ace views. Much of society (at least Western society) seems to lump all attraction into one form: sexual and romantic combined. As asexuality gained more visibility, the idea of romantic and sexual attraction existing independently became more popular. On top of this, other types of attraction got more recognition: for instance, strong platonic attraction (like a non-romantic crush), sensual attraction (the desire for non-sexual physical contact), and aesthetic attraction (the attraction to the physical appearance of a person or object, but no desire for interaction). Note that this isn’t an asexual-exclusive experience, and a story definitely doesn’t need ace characters to explore these topics: many non-aces do experience these varied types of attraction, but haven’t had as much context to recognize or explore them. Asexuality, in recognizing that there are human beings with no sexual attraction, helped open the door to these ideas, but they have always existed. And even though this doesn’t necessarily relate to ace characters, I think it will go a long way to helping asexual experiences of attraction be better accepted.

10. Asexuality is a spectrum, and it’s more than okay to write all along it! I’ve been referring to the most general idea of “asexuality” in this post—probably because I fall completely in that category—but asexuality isn’t as simple as that, and the line between “ace” and “non-ace” isn’t so cut and dry. “Grey-asexuals” are a big part of the ace community, and their experience is both similar to and different from people who just identify as “asexual.” There are also demi-sexuals, who feel sexually attracted only once a strong emotional connection has been formed—and yes, these people deal with a lot of the same issues as asexuals, though of course, many parts of their experience are also unique. Keep this spectrum in mind as you’re writing your characters, even if you do end up writing someone who just identifies as “asexual.” It’s important to remember that the spectrum exists, if only because it’s a reminder that all of us, ace, non-ace, or anywhere in between, are part of the same immensely diverse gradient, instead of simply black and white.

Original post on my website.

[film-focus-mind]

my essay on autistic representation in the media

I wrote this for three months for my usem class, it’s just my opinions on what is wrong with most autistic media representation

Abstract

The representation of those with autism in the media is, simply put, stereotypical and deeply flawed. From depicting people with autism as eternal children, rude, idiotic, or genius savants, the media portrayals play into and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. This portrayal affects how society views autism, despite how consciously some people realize that the autistic representation is not accurate and socially harmful. If a character with autistic traits is shown in a negative light, people will form implicit biases and associate autistic traits as being wrong and bad. Media representation of those with autism has to change to be more accurate and less abusive and stereotyped. There needs to be better autistic representation for the sake of both neurotypical people and people with autism. Stereotypes need to be rejected and replaced with people with autism as being people.

Keywords: autism, media representation, stereotypes, Autism Spectrum Disorder

My interest in autistic representation is personal. My little brother Leo was diagnosed with autism at age three. Despite this diagnosis, he never knew he had autism until he was thirteen. Around that time, the popular kids show Sesame Street started featuring an autistic character named Julia (Cohen, 2017). Julia talked like my brother did: in short incomplete sentences and sometimes repeating what others had just said, she got upset when there were loud noises, and she could not stand the feeling of paint on her fingers. As Leo and I watched the show and the character’s interactions with others, it dawned on me that Leo didn’t know what he and Julia had in common. My parents never told him because they didn’t want Leo to feel different.

“Leo, do you know why you’re like Julia?” I asked.

“Why?” Leo replied. “Why” in Leo’s case also meant who, what, where, when, and how. 

“It’s because you both are autistic!” I explained. “Your brains both work just a little bit differently.”

Although the Julia of Sesame Street was created as a caring and positive role model, she’s one of the few instances of positive representation of people with autism on television. Most autism representation shows people with autism as rude, child-like, dumb, or worse. Many characters who are on the autism spectrum are quite one- dimensional. Having autistic traits has been portrayed in a negative light or in an overly simplistic way. Autistic represetation hardly factors the experiences of actual people with autism. If the media portrayed people with autism as equals, there would be dozens of Julias in mainstream media (Safran, 1998). How is the media portraying people with Autism Spectrum Disorder? How can things improve? What does this say about society’s views on autism? 

For clarification, the terms ‘high functioning’ and ‘low functioning’ are problematic and will not be used in the context of this discussion because those words hold a very discriminatory view of autism, one that prioritizes the neurotypical ways of functioning over other ways of functioning. In this paper, the terms autism and Asperger’s syndrome will be used to differentiate between the two distinctly different types of ways that autism affects people. It is important to remember that Asperger, the doctor whose name is used to describe a branch of autism, was a Nazi (Baron-Cohen, 2018). That historical association speaks great lengths about how autism is/was viewed, considering how Asperger describes autism. Asperger’s opinions on autism would be considered very outdated and insulting to contemporary people with autism (Draaisma, 2009). 

Portrayals of autism in terms of fictional characters can be split into two distinct tropes, which are infantilization (Stevenson, Harp, & Gernsbacher 2014) and the savant (Draaisma, 2009). The former usually applies to autism generally, while the latter applies to those exhibiting the characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome. Tropes are different character archetypes that group characters by their believed-to-be stereotypical traits. In a few cases of media representation, both tropes can apply to the same character, but for the most part they do not overlap. Both tropes only give a glimpse at the complexities of autism, usually leaving out autistic traits that can be seen as good.

To start, there’s infantilization (Stevenson, Harp & Gernsbacher, 2014), or for a better term, the eternal child trope. This trope portrays characters with autism of any age as child-like, and usually also naive or idiotic. These characters can be either autistic or have Asperger’s, but they act the same, naive, unable to focus, throwing tantrums, and generally interacting with the world in “innocent” and “unsophisticated” ways. Also, these characters typically have a special “obsessive” interest that they love talking about, some of examples of obsessive fixations are classical music, science, outer space, cartoons, trains, and dinosaurs. It is more harmful when adults are portrayed with this trope, as a person can be an adult with autism, and a mature autistic adult. We often think of neurotypical children as also having obsessive interests or naïve qualities, so the stereotype is not as blatantly discriminatory. Yet, when these are the only traits an autistic character has, that becomes problematic. This child trope creates a stigma of autism disappearing when one turns eighteen, or that people with autism are incapable of mental growth. Some examples of this trope that can be seen in mainstream film, television and book portrayals are Kirk from the television show Gilmore Girls (Palladino, 2000), Lenny from the great American novel Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, 1965), and Amelie from the French movie Amelie (Jean-Marc, 2001)

Multimedia tropes are not the only case of infantilization of those on the autism spectrum. Most autism-based charities only show children with autism, effectively branding it as a children’s disease and leaving out the reality that many with autism are mature adults. In a study done in 2014, only eight out of 170 autism based charities had pictures that included adults with autism (Stevenson, Harp & Gernsbacher, 2014). When only children with autism are shown, it leaves out adults from the picture. Such absences also contribute to the man-child stereotype. When one only sees children with autism, and then meets adults with autism, they won’t be seen as the adults that they are. Adults with autism then get treated like children. Infantilization ultimately restricts the definition of what a person with autism is like, and the next trope does that as well. 

The next difficult trope is the savant (Draaisma, 2009). The definition of savant is someone who is good at one particular subject, at an almost unnatural level, but that other-worldly savant syndrome seems to come at a price. Characters with autism who fall under this trope are smart beyond their peers, but are depicted as being very rude and as lacking in key social skills. This character trope, like that which focuses on  infantilization, will show people have a special interest, like physics, medicine, drawing, learning languages to name a few examples, which they pursue with genius intensity and knowledge. These characters have friends, but are often depicted as being overly blunt and difficult or not nice to their friends. This kind of portrayal brands people with autism as being bad people and antisocial. Thus, the general public are led to believe that all people with autism must be rude (Safran, 1998). All people with autism are expected to be a know-it-all in one area, but are thought of as idiots if they are not. Some examples of the savant trope are Sherlock from the BBC’s television show Sherlock (Moffat, 2010), Paris from the sitcom Gilmore Girls (Palladino, 2000) and Sheldon Cooper from the tv show the Big Bang Theory (Cendrowski, 2007).

Sometimes, the savant trope is combined with the eternal child trope to create a doubly stereotyped character with autism. Typically these children are beyond their peers, but have trouble making friends, with a tendency to be alienated. An example would be Max from the tv show Parenthood (Holton, 2013). Max enjoys talking about beetles, wearing pirate costumes and he doesn’t like candles. When his parents find out about him being autistic, they resolve not to tell him of his diagnosis. Not telling kids of their diagnosis is bad because the children may be already feeling as if they are an outcast among their peers, but they don’t know why (Sinclair, 1999). Sometimes having information about what makes someone different can provide comfort in challenging situations. Keeping information like that from children with autism does more harm than good. It would deprive an understanding of themselves necessary to overcome their disabilities.

Another autistic stereotype is that autism affects more boys than it does girls (Lai, Lombardo, Auyeung, Chakrabarti, & Baron-Cohen, 2015, pp. 11-24). Most portrayals of autism on television are of males, effectively erasing autistic women from the narrative as well. This erasure actually has an effect on diagnosing autism because many believe that girls do not “get” autism. This also happens on a social level because females do not have the diagnosis that might help them understand their behaviors and social interactions at younger ages. With the bias of being a mostly male disorder, women with autism get diagnosed at a later age than their male counterparts (Bargiela, Steward, & Mandy, 2016). Many autistic women are not diagnosed until adulthood, which can set them back multiple years of working to get help with their disorder. Women being autistic is seen just as much of being an oxymoron as an autistic adult.

Autistic misrepresentation occurs even though characters are not explicitly stated as being autistic. When characters are portrayed with stereotypical autistic traits, they are understood by viewers as being autistic. When people see these traits being portrayed as dislikable, that may cause people to see those traits in a very negative light. This happens even before people with autism have a chance to prove those stereotypes wrong. In short, it doesn’t matter whether the word autism is used. Only the traits matter, not the label. 

How do autistic stereotypes affect people with autism? For starters, when people meet someone who shares traits with a negatively portrayed autistic character, people think that having those traits are linked with being a bad person (Safran, 1998). This leads to isolation, ostracization, and bullying. Stereotyping of any sort can be quite harmful. People will tend to judge all persons with autism they encounter in real life based on the examples they see in media. The general public will see what’s on tv and believe it to be true, even if subconsciously. It predisposes persons to negatively prejudge people with autism before meeting them.

People without autism are also hampered by these stereotypes by causing people with autism to struggle to find their respected and credible voice in social, educational and work settings. Successful interactions with people with autism require an unbiased and accurate understanding of them. These successful interactions are rendered less likely by stereotypical portrayals, which foster disrespect and distrust of people with autism encountered in real life. Everyone should want to treat everyone with respect, and correct their behavior if it is wrong.

People can actively undertake many strategies to make autistic representation more like Julia from Sesame Street, and less like every other character fuelling misunderstanding. The first solution is hiring actual people with autism as consultants for a show (Huws & Jones, 2010, pp. 331-344; Holton, 2013), ensuring the screenwriting matches up with the real experience of autism. Another way is to try to make a multidimensional and meaningful character, not a character who is merely a foil based on comic relief or being a challenge for the other characters. Autistic characters must exist as themselves, not as plot devices for other neurotypical characters.  

Another solution is to approach rectifying harmful stereotypes by using a character to educate non-autistic people about the realities of autism (Behind the Scenes, 2017). Upon seeing a character as a learning opportunity, research is done into the subject, and a more accurate portrayal occurs. People have a tendency to learn from engaging and considering fictional characters. Thus, making one accurate fictional character would do the most good when it comes to opening up people to the nuanced realities of autism spectrum disorder.   

.In conclusion, autistic representation in books, films and televisions shows negatively effects or influences therefore society’s general views of autism. These tropes are discriminatory and harm people with autism by spreading misinformation. There are many years of poor autistic misrepresentation that those in the media industry must work to undo.

References

Bargiela, S., Steward, R., & Mandy, W. (2016). The experiences of late-diagnosed women with autism spectrum conditions: an investigation of the female autism phenotype. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(10), 3281-3294.

Baron-Cohen, S., Klin, A., Silberman, S., & Buxbaum, J. D. (2018). Did Hans Asperger actively assist the Nazi euthanasia program? Molecular Autism, 9(1). doi:10.1186/s13229-018-0209-5

 Bringing Julia to Life [Behind the Scenes]. (2017, March 20). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzfHVmSLRU

Cendrowski M (Director). (2007). The Big Bang Theory [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: CBS.

Cohen E (Director). (2017). Sesame Street, season 47 episode 15 [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: PBS

Draaisma D. (2009). Stereotypes of autism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 364(1522), 1475-80. Retrieved from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2008.0324

Holton, A. E. (2013). What’s wrong with max? Parenthood and the portrayal of Autism Spectrum Disorders 37(1) 45-63. In Sagepub. Retrieved January 29, 2019, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0196859912472507

 Huws, J.C. & Jones, R.S.P (2010) ‘They just seem to live their lives in their own little world’: Lay perceptions of autism, Disability & Society, 25:3, 331-344, DOI: 10.1080/09687591003701231

Jean-Marc D. (Producer), & Jeunet J. (Director). (2001). Amelie [Motion Picture]. France: Canal+.

Lai, M., Lombardo, M. V., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). Sex/Gender Differences and Autism: Setting the Scene for Future Research. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 54(1), 11-24. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2014.10.003

Moffat S, (Executive Producer). (2010). Sherlock [Television series]. London, United Kingdom: BBC.

Safran, S. P. (1998). Disability Portrayal in Film: Reflecting the Past, Directing the Future. Exceptional Children, 64(2), 227-238. doi:10.1177/001440299806400206

Steinbeck, J. (1965). Of mice and men: With an introduction. New York: Random House.

Sherman Palladino, A (Director). (2000). Gilmore Girls [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: the WB.

Sinclair, J. (1999). Don't mourn for us. Autistic Rights Movement UK.

[jiezaihencool-blog]

Digital Screening Has Expanded What is Possible

Movies in the simplest sense referred to the technology which quickly reproduced successive frames, producing a so-called "motion illusion". Julie (2016) stated that since its birth more than a century ago, film itself had undergone a transition from silent to sounds, from black and white to colour, from film to digital filmmaking, essentially allowing people to perceive reality by watching moving visual images. Given the industries’ close connection to technology, films had undergone major changes since the advent of digital technology. It was obvious that most movies today, no matter how “traditional” they seemed, involved digital technology, with digitalization being applied from pre-production to post-production to screening. Movies were no longer based solely on photographic film, along with their distribution being revolutionised as well. Instead, they were packaged in digital files and delivered to the audience anytime and anywhere: at home, at school, at companies, on buses, even on airplanes, and through handheld devices, headsets, TV plasma screens, tapes, DVDs and Blu-rays, with dozens of Internet formats (Cubitt 2010). The 35mm photographic films, the namesake of this media, were now less common in filmmaking, had disappeared in post-production after the arrival of digital films, and would even be removed entirely from the release project (Julie 2006). In view of this, scholars were struggling to identify movies today, with Manovich (1995) even proposing that cinema’s core identity had changed since it was possible to create entire photorealistic scenes by computers (Cubitt 2010).

1.Film digitization and digital cinema

The meaning of digitalization denoted converting everything that exists in other analogue forms into digital information and using computer to deal with digital information. Digitalization presented an opportunity to change the film production (Ohanian & Natalie 2000). In the past, information was in the form of simulation and must be converted into digital information. This transformation process was called a digitization. The core of the film digitization was to convert the video recorded by the film as a carrier into a digital record for the effect of the carrier record and convert it into a digital signal for processing at the computer. It can be seen that computers play a pivotal role in the process of digitalization of movies. It can be said that computers are the basic premise of digitalization of movies. This is not an exaggeration, because computer technology is fully involved in the process of digital filming, including pre-production, actual shooting and even post-production (Ohanian & Natalie 2000). For example, in the pre-production, the scenes of the film, the plot of the story, the simulation and rehearsal of the screen all need the help of the computer system to find the most suitable narrative structure and the most impactful solution; in the actual shooting, there are some Shooting that cannot be done in the traditional way can also be done by computer technology; for example, in the post-production, the computer processes the image and sound, and combines the captured movie material with the computer image.

2.The influence of film digitization on film ontology

2.1. Re-exploration of the nature of film

The introduction of digital technology had impacted the "real" nature of traditional movies, thus greatly expanding the meaning of the cinema. Traditional movies captured a picture frame and recorded it, with its essence based on the redemption of material reality within a camera (Kracauer 1997), as a proof of existence. Special effects then, largely constrained by physical limitations, were simply applied directly on the original film. Jump to today and digital technology could use computer-generated imagery (CGI) to achieve pre-simulation and picture production without physical shooting. As a result, movies were no longer just slavish recordings of reality, but created entirely new realities, otherwise called virtual reality (VR), which Julie (2016) termed “neo-creationism” in her book The Ontology of Film. These advancements brought about great visual effects, such as the intricate dreams in Inception (2010), or Jack’s travels between the real world and the dreamy planet in Avatar (2009), or the believable interactions between real actors and the digital-made tiger in Life of Pi (2012). The images created by these computers demonstrated that films could be not just simple copies of the physical reality, but also “visual lies” challenging the traditional concepts of reality itself.

2.2 Enrich the film genres

This revolution had directly led to the emergence of many new film types, reorganizing the global mainstream film consumption. The most representative genre was disaster movies, since traditional photographic imaging methods, such as modelling, made it impossible to film at ground zero and limited the development of such films. Filmmakers today instead relied on digital technology, realistically reproducing disaster scenarios in safety or through other simulation methods. The Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) was considered to be the break in the disaster genre, with some considering said film and Star Wars (1977) to be the forerunners of their respective genres. Particularly, deployment of computer-controlled camera motion in Jaws (1975) made it difficult to distinguish the hydraulic fake shark model and the real thing. After its success, various disaster scenes, even outside the genre, had become the highlights of such films, with disaster films securing its place in the mainstream.

2.3 Influence on the Narrative Structure of the Film

Throughout its long years in producing movies, Hollywood had perfected a certain type of film narrative. Such narratives had always contained a continuous chain of causal relationships, with all elements in the film being subordinate to its narrative, editing, scene scheduling, lighting, camera movement and performance joints. This method, known as the classic Hollywood narrative, produced a transparent style that allowed viewers to only pay attention to the story told by the film without paying attention to the way it was narrated (Allen & Gomery 1985). However, with the introduction of digital technology such film principles had changed dramatically: mainly that the story and its clear narrative ebbed away from the centre stage, and instead being replaced by vivid pictures and shocking sound. Most evident was the superhero genre. From Captain America and Iron Man, to Thor and even the Avengers series, these films are all telling the same story – one that involved superheroes defeating evil forces and saving the world. It was especially worth noting that given many film critics’ belief that superhero movies were lacking in depth and story plots, the absolute dominance of those movies in the current global film market was of particular interest. This phenomenon could be attributed to the proliferation of digital technology, since the story itself was never meant to be the highlight of such movies. Rather, the shocking special effects, the immersive audition and the arousing fight scenes were their selling points. It could be said that movies such as superhero films were the direct result of digital technology development and one of the biggest beneficiaries. It could also be identified as the most representative example of the transformation of the Hollywood film narrative structure. According to statistics of the global top ten box office rankings, seven movies were superhero films, with Avengers: Endgame (2019) of the Marvel pulling in first. Interestingly, two other films, Avatar (2009) and Jurassic World (2015), were also successful for their special effects by utilising superb technology alongside an amazing combination of audition. In this respect, it could even be considered as a superhero film as well.

3.The impact on the distribution and exhibition of the film

The development of digital technology had greatly influenced the film screening media. As one of the most important means of film distribution, the screen was one of the main media for digital film exhibition, guaranteeing viewers to experience the digital cinema. The two main projection formats were Digital Light Projection (DLP) and Silicon-based Liquid Crystal Display (LCOS), which were geometrically identical to the main formats of fixed screens, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and plasma screens - using light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Therefore, today, projecting devices were represented by large-screen high-quality plasmas and liquid crystal screens occupying the mainstream. The audience did not have to go to the cinema to see the movies, as it could be distributed more easily, with the range of media for displaying the movie was greatly expanded.

There is no doubt that digital technology expanded what was possible, changing and enriching the production practice of the film industry. However, these practices still fell under the overarching cinema methodology with revolutions in sound, colour, digital. In the end, technology after technology, at its core, cinema remains cinema. 

Reference List

Allen, R. C., & Gomery, D. (1985). Film history: Theory and practice (p. 108-109). New York: McGraw-Hill. New York: Knopf

Cubitt, S. (2000). Making Space. Retrieved from http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2010/feature-articles/making-space/

Julie. N. (2016). What Is Film?. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang US. Retrieved Sep 10, 2019, from https://www-peterlang-com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/view/title

Kiwitt, P. (2012). What Is Cinema in a Digital Age?: Divergent Definitions from a Production Perspective. UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION, 64(4), 3-22.

Kracauer, S. (1997). Theory of film: The redemption of physical reality. Princeton University Press.

Manovich, L. (1995). “What Is Digital Cinema?” Retrieved from

http://gunkelweb.com/coms465/texts/digital_cinema.pdf

Ohanian, T., & Phillips, N. (2000). Digital filmmaking: The changing art and craft of making motion pictures. Introduction to Digital Filmmaking (p. 18-42). U.S: Taylor & Francis Group.

Wasser, F. (2015). Spielberg’s Jaws and the Disaster Film. Cinergie, 4(7), 45-54. doi: 10.6092/issn.2280-9481/6971

[pingo1387]

in one piece, the women are always limited to side fights and being lesser villains. very rarely are they allowed to fight in close-range combat, instead using weapons that work from a distance. this is especially true of the women considered “beautiful,” making the writing and art lend themselves to sexist principles. in this essay i will 

demonstrate how the potentially strong female characters being pushed to one side detracts from the story and weakens the writing and characterization overall. 

We’ll start with discussing women in media as a whole. Writing women in media has always had some layer of sexism to it, whether it was punishing a woman for wanting the same thing as her male peers by belittling her, reducing her to the trope of being nothing more than a motivation to the main male character (often by “fridging” her), or inserting her into a romantic relationship that had nothing to do with the plot (furthering the idea that women in a fictional sphere must exist in some kind of romantic relationship, or at the very least be confined to a role like The Sister or The Mother). When female characters appear in cartoons, they are more often than not drawn and written as extremely feminine, while their male counterparts are allowed to be “neutral,” with no particularly masculine traits. More recently the idea of the “empowered” woman has come into play---the female heroine wears revealing clothing with feminine accessories, because she is a Strong Independent Woman who can dress how she wants, and her femininity is now her tool with which she attacks, all while being eye candy for a male audience. There is also the common trope (yet unnamed) where a female character is shown to be far more accomplished at a job or task than the main male character, but because he is the Chosen One, he overtakes her skills after a single training montage or with no training at all (see The Matrix and the Percy Jackson movie). 

Another important facet of this “modern sexism” is that women are not allowed to fight, and when they are, they are limited to side battles and ranged combat (see the trope “Guys Smash, Girls Shoot”). This is a sharp turnaround in public taste from the equally sexist gratuitous violence against women, which not too long ago was everywhere (and more covertly still exists today on the set but off the cameras). This unnecessary hitting, threatening, and beating of women was more or less for men’s (vindictive) pleasure and somewhat reflected a society that accepted wives as property and thus allowed husbands to beat their wives, often backed up by laws. While I would argue that this current climate of a taboo against hitting women both in real life and on screen is much better than a climate of beating women, it is a different story when there is a legitimate fight happening. I’ll stick to fiction for this essay and keep real life discussions for another post. 

The long and short of it is that if a woman (in fiction) is shown to be at least as strong and skilled as her male colleagues or opponents, there is no reason why she should be relegated to minor battles or no battles at all. This would not be a problem in and of itself if it did not happen so frequently, in all forms of media, to all women. Of course there are examples of media where women are allowed to have major battles, but because the majority of media does not let their female characters (if there are female characters at all) do this, I’m focusing on the problem at hand. 

Let’s narrow our focus even more and zoom in on the main topic: One Piece. Oda is notorious for drawing all of his women he deems beautiful with the same body which he describes as “three circles and an X.” He also says in the same question that he gets complaints from his female audience and just ignores them. (I would be willing to bet that if you switched the heads around on the women in this colorspread, not counting Big Mom (who we’ll get to later), you wouldn’t be able to tell at first glance what was wrong). Oda, however, also refuses to let his female characters fight properly, much like other major stories out there. 

All of these “beautiful” women in One Piece who get to fight use ranged weapons. Nami uses her Clima Tact, which allows her to create mirages and send weather-based attacks at others from a distance. Boa Hancock, touted as one of the strongest women in the world by virtue of being the only female Warlord, has been shown to kick her enemies, but more often uses her devil fruit to turn others to stone. Kalifa, a member of an elite force of the Government and likely trained since childhood, primarily uses her devil fruit (a soap/bubble ability) to disarm her opponents when she is shown fighting. Vivi used Peacock Slashers, a string of small blades, to lash out at opponents after disarming them with a distracting dance. Laki, from Shandora, used a bazooka-like weapon, and Perona wasn’t even physically present for her battle with Usopp, instead using a spiritual projection to intimidate him while planting bombs in his path. Even Robin, who technically uses her hands and feet to fight (when she gets to), attacks from a safe distance thanks to her ability. All of these women are either part of a team of villains who are set up to be some of the strongest foes yet, a powerful force in the world, and/or are main characters, yet all of them end up forced into minor battles, none of them are the leaders, and all use some kind of ranged weapon to fight. 

There are rare exceptions to this, but the exceptions mostly apply to women considered “ugly”---in other words, not depicted with the “hot” hourglass figure standard of the women. When Alvida was introduced, she was considered so ugly it was laughable she would think of herself as the most beautiful woman in the world, and she was shown to be merciless with her spiked club. However, ever since she slimmed down into a standard One Piece beauty, she was never shown using her club again despite carrying it, and has not even been shown fighting, instead using her new ability to deflect all attacks. Miss Merry Christmas, a wrinkled middle-aged woman, was depicted as shrill, annoying, and mole-like, and she attacked Usopp and Chopper more directly by surprising them from under the ground and even dragging Usopp through crumbling walls to hurt him. Big Mom is probably the most prominent exception at the moment, as she uses her incredible size and strength to pummel entire cities to the ground, but even she has rarely been shown in actual combat, and the fight with her was abandoned altogether near the end of Whole Cake. Nami fought in more close combat when she had a baton, but has fought from a distance ever since Usopp gave her the Clima Tact. Tashigi, who uses a sword, has been shown attempting to fight, but was easily defeated in Loguetown, and was shot down verbally in Punk Hazard by nearly everyone she came across for being a weak woman (which in my opinion was entirely undeserved, but I digress). Finally, Koala was shown to be skilled at Fishman Karate, but has only been shown using it once, and hasn’t fought since then (to be fair, we haven’t seen her much at all since Dressrosa). 

The only prominent situations where the beautiful women are allowed to participate in close range combat are in slapstick moments. Nami frequently slaps around her crewmates with punches and kicks, especially Brook and Luffy, and Hancock has often been shown throwing her grandmother out the window. However, the normal laws of anime fights don’t apply to slapstick---the wounds are never permanent and often disappear in the next scene, and no one brings it up again. The women who do end up in serious fights come out unscathed or at least never as damaged as the men do, preserving their unmarked beauty. This is shown even outside of battle; the women rarely have scars, for example, and even when Nami was sometimes shown to have a scar from trying to remove her tattoo, Oda has stopped drawing the scar since at least Skypiea. The rare moments where a woman can participate in a serious fight, close-range combat or not, are few and far between, especially in more recent chapters. 

This pattern of pushing women into the sidelines when it comes to fights, even when they’re introduced as strong and smart, perpetuates sexist stereotyping that women are inherently weaker than men and are physically unable to deal with close-range combat, letting them fight without damaging their perfect beauty. While I am certainly not asking to bring back gratuitous violence against women, female characters who through their actions demonstrate time and time again they are strong and can be self-reliant are done a disservice when they are only ever allowed to fight other women (which in the narrative means the weaker members fight the weaker enemies) or male characters who are obviously meant to be the weak links of the group. Showing women coming out unscathed 90-100% of the time adds to the proof that their battles were against weaker enemies than the men’s, and sexualizes women further. “See? This woman can fight and come out still stunningly beautiful.” 

Women using close-range weapons is not a bad thing by itself, just like a female character wearing makeup and being very feminine is not an inherently bad thing. However, when these things become a consistent pattern of all women across all media (or all female characters in a piece of media), they must be considered part of the whole problem of sexism instead of a stand-alone issue. And in this case, the whole problem of sexism in One Piece is that women are almost always treated as inherently weaker than men, even by the characters whose characterization shouldn’t allow for such sexism, such as Luffy or Zoro. 

To summarize, women in One Piece, especially beautiful women, always being forced to fight the minor battles or no battles at all contributes to the problem of sexism in the story. It shows the viewer that the women in the world may be smarter than the men, but are never stronger, and if they are stronger, they will never stay stronger. 

[tonystarkstan]

tips for bad brain days

I know sometimes it’s easier to just not eat at all, but you gotta. So when it’s hard to really commit to eating, there are a couple things you can do:

Stick to easy foods, like soup. I typically keep ramen, tomato soup, and a few other canned/packaged soups in my dorm. They’re light and take the least effort to consume.

Clif bars are your friend. They’re small, pretty tasty (depending on your flavor preferences), and they pack plenty of protein. If you can’t eat it all at once, that’s okay! Small bites at a time.

Nuts such as almonds, cashews, and pistachios are always a great way to go. Trail mix, too.

I also keep protein shakes in my dorm. A lot of them aren’t very tasty, but Ensure is actually pretty bearable. Preferable, even. Even small sips are good. Your body needs the protein.

For me, sleep is generally hard to come by, but it’s especially worse when my brain wants to attack me. A few things I do to try to sleep:

A white noisemaker. We keep one in our dorm and I almost can’t sleep without it. The extra, soft noise almost works like a sponge and soaks up a lot of stray thoughts. (shhh I know I sound crazy) You can buy these in stores, but since they’re pretty expensive, there are apps for them too. Or you can just use a fan.

Play music, but only instrumental. At least for me, I find lyrics to be distracting because my brain wants to sing along with them. There are plenty of piano tracks and sleep playlists on YouTube. A lot of the tracks from The Theory of Everything movie put me right to sleep.

I know it’s easier to just be on your phone and scroll mindlessly through social media, but don’t. It keeps your brain stimulated and definitely won’t help you sleep. Keep your phone away.

I know it’s easier to isolate yourself and stay in bed, laying in the dark, but try not to. Alternatives to sleeping the day away include:

Going for a walk. It sounds lame, but fresh air and sunlight seriously do wonders. And if you have a dog - even better! Take them with you, I’m sure they’d be thrilled.

Watch your favorite movie! Sometimes facing our world is too much, especially on the bad days. Disappear into a world you love. (But only for a little bit! We need you here!!)

Don’t isolate yourself. Talk to a friend. It doesn’t have to be about anything sad or depressing. Just ask how they are, start a conversation. Just hearing their voice is often enough to remind you that you’re not alone.

I know I’m REALLY bad about not drinking water even on a good day, so I’m perpetually dehydrated which means I always feel at least kind of awful. On bad days, it’s just that much worse. Things I’m working on to stay hydrated:

Sounds simple, but always keep a water bottle with you. I don’t really ever feel thirsty, but that doesn’t mean my body doesn’t need the water. If I see a bottle on my desk during class, usually I’m like, “Oh, I should probably drink.”

You can buy water flavorings from just about any grocery store. I prefer the liquid that you squeeze a small portion into your water. It’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but it’s tasty enough that it keeps you drinking.

Don’t drink. Don’t do drugs. Don’t self-harm. I know that seems like it’d go without saying but all of those are forms of self-destruction and escapism. In the end, they’ll do more harm than good. Healthier alternatives:

Draw. I’m terrible at drawing, but I really love taking a pen or marker and drawing henna designs on my arms and legs when I feel the itch to self-destruct. Obviously avoid permanent markers. Pens aren’t the healthiest for skin but alas. If it helps you get through the day, it’s worth it.

This is going to sound weird, but this calms anxiety for me, big time. Take a small square of crinkled aluminum foil and put it on a flat, hard surface. Then methodically use your nail to gently scratch it flat until it’s almost reflective.

Braid or make bracelets out of string. Keep your hands and mind busy.

Read!! Reading is so great, because it takes you out of your head for a little bit. Live through a character that isn’t you.

Writing is great too! Even if you’re not writing a story, write letters to people or make lists of things you love, things you want to do in the future, and things you’re looking forward to.

Bake! The results are great, and comfort foods are the best. Keep your hands and mind busy by working on a recipe and then reap the rewards with brownies or cookies or whatever it is you made. Bonus if you make them for other people, because then you just feel like a nice person (but hey! you already are!!).

Talk to someone. Tell a trusted friend, teacher, parent, or sibling that you’re not feeling great. Or even if you can’t do that, just make an effort to be around good people who won’t let you do anything that could hurt yourself.

Whenever I’m really messed up, I genuinely don’t want to do anything. This goes as far as not wanting to brush my hair, teeth or take a shower. So basically:

If you can, take a long bath! It’s so relaxing, especially if you play your favorite music. The cleaner you are, the better you’ll feel about yourself - mentally and physically.

Brushing your hair and teeth also apply to this. It’s hard to feel good about anything if you feel physically grimy.

Dress up! Girl, you wanna wear that cute top and skirt? Wanna wear a dress? Go for it! You don’t need a special occasion to strut your stuff. Do your makeup, paint your nails, curl your hair. If you’re a guy, you can totally do those things too! Wear that nice button up, slick your hair back or not at all. Do what makes you feel good about yourself!

Songs for bad brain days (Note: it’s best not to listen to sad music. I know it’s relatable but it really doesn’t do much to actually help):

A Light in the Hallway by Pentatonix

You Will Be Found from Dear Evan Hansen

It Comes Back to You by Imagine Dragons

Saturn by Sleeping At Last

You Are Enough by Sleeping At Last

Rainbow by Kesha

Stay Alive by José González

Move (Keep Walkin’) by Toby Mac

These aren’t all foolproof, but they’re all things I try to keep in mind on my bad days, so I thought I’d compile a list and share it with you guys. I hope someone is able to find some of these tips helpful. Self-care is hard and it’s not always pretty. Please take care of yourselves. I’m a bit of a hypocrite, but reach out if you can.

It’s going to be okay.

[cloning-misadventures]

Dimensonal merge or Isaac’s notes

Isaac’s notes

“Her name was Scarlett, the blue heart of the Commador consoles. She ruled over the nation of Comma. It was a very prosperous nation. In 1992, Scarlett fell, like the Atari, but she fell into the region of Western Virginia. Everyone mostly survived the impact. The citizens explored the USA, and take in other cultures and religions. But Shares dropped for Scarlett, and she passed on in 1994, but her soul and memories were sent to a Commodore 64 console in this world, waiting to be bestowed to the next blue heart. I have heard that those memories have been bestowed recently to a woman who has owned that very same c64 console since the 1980s. And that woman was me. I am the next bestower of the blue heart.”

Firstly, and mainly, the inhabitants of their earth and of the earth, related to linked local dimensions, like equstria mostly and mainly consist of the fictional and OC individuals that you read or hear about in the media. So if you’ve ever read a comic book, watched movies, and TV shows, played a video game, and so forth, anime included, you’ve acquainted with at least one individual or anthropological creature of Europa. They are not aliens unless they were written as aliens of this world, and they are civil and socialable. This does not apply to villains of our world. Villans are like everyone else, they seek to be understood. Use some consideration to determine whether they should be trusted. Very likely, those that have been heroes, and are kind and good, deserve your kindness. Then there are the anti-heroes. They are the unsure protagonists, and they don’t deserve your energy or kindness. The antiheroes include those who’ve been traumatized, the unkind, the disabled, or the confused.

During the dimensional merge, you will begin to see those individuals fade in and out from view, similar to spirits. Do not think of them as ghosts, for they are living breathing individuals,like you and I. The main advice when you see them here is to keep calm and keep doing your business. no need to call the cops. Something that one person saw may not be seen by another. Do not disturb the individuals as they are doing their own thing. It remains best to save the interactions with them for after they become fully tangent after the dimensional merge. The exception is if you are the original creator of the OC you may see amongst others, then you may, acknowledge your OC with a greeting and sincere kindness but treat them as you would treat yourself, or if they’re busy with their errands, best not to disturb. AGAIN: Common sense! Please refrain from using any weaponry on them and don’t be reckless; you’ll want to treat them like you would with anyone else, WITH KINDNESS. Just be aware that a lot of them will become unsteadily as the days come.

; all of the Ocs countings from the self-counterparts that greatly differ from there respective creator makes up about 38.75 of the total population in the C-345 earth. Which means the remaining 61.25 percent is literally equal to 100 percent of 134’s earth ( Our current dimension). And in thinking it further last night in doing all the math, the ratio of those who survive, and those die in the dimensional merge is equivalent.  Anyone who wants to do the math for themselves: that's 51%  for surviving, 41% dying, 8% margin of error, (which is very slim), respectively for both piles of earth with the likely and best outcome of up to 59% of our earth surviving, and 51% of their earth surviving. The ratio of those surviving and those dying and the margin for error applies to both piles of earth.

As for locations and objects, Between both dimensions, there are differences and similarities between buildings, architecture, and other objects. Those of that world will either blend or merge with their counterparts here or on the level of significance or importance, like the Washington Monument, or the Lincoln Memorial in Springfield, one may replace the other. In short, the monuments will be destroyed.

For example the canterlot high school, complete with the statue and portal to Equestria, in front of it; it has been confirmed that the building and the city are located in the state of Maryland. Given if there was a similar shape building here where CHS is located in their world, CHS will blend in and replace the original building. If there is a totally different building or a forest where CHS goes, then those building will disappear. If there is nothing there then CHS will simply appear there. everything will be destroyed and whoever happens to be in those buildings will never be seen again.

Apply this logic to all of the structures and buildings and cites around the world. Depending on which version has higher significance, altogether, determined by Jesus, and the cosmos, between both dimensions that building or city area will replace or merge and supersede, it’s counterpart here. In the event should the building you are in is changing, or suddenly there’s a new building, get out of that building. If you don’t do this, you will be stuck between those buildings.

If your cities order an evacuation, listen to your mayor, and local authorities. Most importantly, remain calm during those times. You might want to have an emergency evac kit with food and water, first aid, survival, and so forth that you can stow and go-on foot waiting and ready. KEEP COMMON SENSE. You will be able to return to your homes, or their counterparts soon after the merger are completed. The officials of the combined city will get together and get everything organized as needed and well. Even the local superheroes and heroes will help in keeping in the peace as good as possible among the chaos.

Situations, amongst which was her having to spend most of her life in Virginia and was almost-mayor for half a decade. Also, before coming out as a transwoman she used to be horny all the time and wanted to sleep with women. Fortunately as the goddess of Comma, I have created a law that was put retroactively into effect in 1980 where Christy was to never have sexual intercourse with anyone until after her time was done as mayor, which by then, turned out, she came into her womanhood, so fatefully, it ended up working out. But I digress.

(This probably refers to Isaac)

Typically, everyone’s respective self-counterpart behaves and acts according to subconscious thoughts and feelings of you all matching and respectively, 1:1. Here’s where it can differ: if you are an artist, creator, writer, etcetera, or you are known to have a powerful imagination and physic-link to yourself and your counterpart and seeing things through their eyes even as you, yourself, dream and daydream, AND you have created at least one OC or one original character. When you create your OC and make it really stand out, albeit existing in this timeline or existing somewhere totally different, where like on earth or anyone of the galaxies or some new planet, like planet Dolan, which does exist in the alternative dimension next to Saturn. Reality differing from the settings and events that have been 1:1 between both here, Our dimension, and their dimensions, your OC spawned from that of or from your self-counterpart there will exist in C-345. If nothing is specified, or Somewhere/Somewhen different if specified. And When or where you mainly have your OC located, your Self-counterpart Becomes your main or One OC. With all of us creators and our self-counterparts, who now visually, situationally, or personality-wise, even slightly differ from ourselves, we are capable to Co-exist, and interact with them respectively, without any cosmic repercussions. Your respective, individual self-counterparts in C-345 are living either 1:1 with yourself, personally, situationally and so forth, or super close in similarity in their lives as you and everyone else who does not have an OC. Aside from those there who have vastly differing situations, and so forth from yourselves, all things considered, and beknowst to Emanuelle, Jesus, the cosmos and so forth amongst us deities. I am still in training at the novice level, so I only know up to a certain level of the situation and who’s gonna stay or go that I consciously or subconsciously am able to know so please no questions on very specific to me.

Also, there is a very small total worldwide percentage of our earth who has no existing self-counterpart at all. Anyway, here is the low-down and no sugar-coated gonna-happen: Those of you who are not fated to make it to the dimensional merge will face one of the two methods of the paradox effect...

One, you might simply D I E in some inexplicable, subtle, horrific, or (insert adjective here) Death that is simply UNAVOIDABLE. (Personally, even I, myself, in empathy feel just as shocked typing and writing that, as you are, and I am truly, truly sorry)

Or Two, and I am optimistic towards this outcome: you might merge with your self-counterpart, and with your respective consciousness and personalities becoming one, and very likely unchanged in perspective. This ruling and outcome also apply to all of the animals and objects of this world that has a matching counterpart in the alternate earth. Animals and objects are likely to merge with their counterparts. Some of the animals self-counterparts amongst the pokemon there which that will form will supersede their forms of here.

Now for the even more grim part: mentioning of those are amongst those on the chopping block. Again these type of people has been fated to die or merge (Unavoidable) during the dimensional merge. But afterward, I’ll talk about those who survive. As I mentioned earlier, among those Left-behind, are those who have been really cruel or mean to those in the past, and remain consistent on that, up to the point it’s like a fetish to them.  About half of the total number of soldiers in the world are there as well, regardless of Country, Nation, Religion, Race, Orientation, and so forth. Also People of the business and corporations whose sole motivation is money and Selfishness. But in total, no less, but more than 40% of the total worldwide population will merge with their Self-Counterpart or die. Now for the positive outlook: who survives! Everyone who does not have a self-counterpart in the alternative dimension; Everyone who has at least one OC created by themselves respectively here: Children under 12 years old will survive; those with positivity, kindness, goodwill, Optimism, Can-do spirit and Motivation, sense of Good Justice, and other goodness in their hearts, souls, and beings, All creators, Writers, Artists, Voice actors, Actors, and so forth on Animation and entertainment behind-scenes, whose motivation has been moreover for the art, soul, and Heart, and so-forth, Rather then the money, or fame or infamy, of it all… They Survive! Hallelujah! But I digress.

And now, a note to everyone in general, on this world, but at particular at those at risk:

If you have done more bad then good in your lives there is still time to make amends and apologize to everyone have wronged, including yourself. There is also time to simply take part in local community events in kindness and goodwill to make up for the bad. Continue with your works and crafts fellow creators; Y'all are able to communicate with your OCs and self-counterparts; even make a home space with or nearby them for yourself. But most importantly: keep thinking, and use your common sense, knowledge, and wisdom to keep yourselves safe and well. Enjoy your life.

But what will happen after the merge, after the buildings and all of the people are together, you ask?

Very likely, Everyone will be able to return to their homes. But those whose homes have been altered by one dimension or the other’s building, even in the possibility of moving back in with a superhero, anti-hero, villain, or yours, or someone else’s self counterpart, The best and the sound thing to do in the meantime is to move back into the one home together, regardless of Government Regulated occupancies of the building, if need be, you all are more than capable calmly discussing how Y'all can live together, better, or to relocate one or the other with local governments assistance and Help with the cost of the new home. And who stays should be determined in extensive thought and common sense of circumstances of one or the other; Keep calm and take your time thinking about it, or seek help from a local impartial third party to hear from both sides, and make a fair and reasonably sound final decision on who stays and who leaves. Another detail is the people who end up staying, while their self-counterparts either merge with them or dies.REMEMBER, these people have had the most similar or matching personality aspects and memories, so those of you all who are friends or family with these people are capable of picking up where they’ve left off. Otherwise, if the individuals have no memory of you or the situation, that led Y'all to become friends in the first place, it’s possible to make a fresh start on y’alls relationship, or if you feel it needed or choose to, simply let them go and move forward with your life. My deepest condolences to those you who end up letting them go. Locations and Local government: Now, for example, whatever city it was in New Jersey has now become Gotham City, For real, your home will have a similar or new address, with the obvious difference being that it’s in Gotham City, and possibly in the Zip Code.

You’ll probably need to fill out a change of address form to update that at your local Post Office and update anything else with your new address. The Local government where you are is likely to pick up where it left off and resume work as quickly as possible. Even the White House in DC will end up taking their time picking things back up and adapting to life as we know it.

But, in due time, short or long, after getting everything resituated, Everyone on the earth will have become used to being around everyone who they’ve known as “fictional characters” and accepting them as real people, anthropomorphic animals, intelligent beings from other dimensions or planets, and so forth, as Y'all had before with everyone else before the dimensional merge. And life and time will continue to march forward and onward.

Another topic: us creators/artists/authors/ and any and all future creations and edits, will those creations take place and happen on our earth as well? That outcome is likely, so unless Y'all had previously, specifically, drawn/written your OCs and their events in an alternate timeline, location, planet, dimension, galaxy, or so forth: EXERCISE CAUTION as this will not only affect the local area and space around your own self-counterpart, but yourself as well. Thinking is only one thing. Bringing it to confirmed fruition is another, especially if you’ve taken pen to page. Because once you’ve completed that story or even a word in that sentence with that ending punctuation at the end; moreover completing by signing your name on the completed piece; you have set a chain of events that will happen around your OC, or yourself. Either that OR a new dimension for all of that to happen outside of our combined earth could be opened in all of this. Personally, I want to encourage staying creative and creating anyway. So much has to be final and determined sound and well by the cosmos and fate of events. We will be able to figure this part out better later on after the dimensional merge.

With Love

Isaac.

[hongkongartman-mlee]

“The Artistic Lawyer or the Lawyerlike Artist?”

(acknowledgement: Interview of Hong Kong Lawyer, publication of The Law Society of Hong Kong, with Maurice Lee) (by Sonali Khemka)

There is a widely accepted theory that people are either left-brained or right-brained, meaning that one side of their brain is dominant. If you are mostly analytical and methodical in your thinking, you are said to be left-brained. If you tend to be more creative or artistic, you are thought to be right-brained. In Maurice Lee’s case however, the equal dominance of both sides has shaped him into the person he is today – a lawyer with the soul of an artist.

Writing Right

Lee enjoyed writing from as early as his teenage years, when he would take part in and win several writing competitions in high school. Encouraged by these victories, he applied for an after-school-scriptwriting class organised by Hong Kong TVB in 1978 – a class that only had twenty spots and over 3,000 applicants. At the age of seventeen and still in high school, Lee managed to bag a place as the youngest member of the class. “The classes were intense. They were held five times a week in the evenings and for three hours each,” he recalls. His immense enjoyment of the activity and aptitude for it led him to not only complete the course but also work part-time as a scriptwriter for TVB for few years after graduating from high school. At the time, his heart was set on becoming a professional scriptwriter or director.

However, the left side of his brain nudged at this point and Lee was tempted to pursue a university degree and career that was more academically sound and commercially viable. “My family told me that if you are in the creative field in the early 80s, you will face a very rocky path with many ups and downs. But if you are a lawyer, you have a safe landing,” he shares. After an internal battle between the left and right side of his brain, Lee eventually accepted his place in The University of Hong Kong’s School of Law. Not keen on giving up on his creative side, he continued working as a part-time scriptwriter for TVB throughout his four years in law school, focusing primarily on hour-long dramas and eventually switching to comedy. “I was good at writing dramas, but the producer told me I was not emotionally mature for the material in the drama shows,” he recalls amusingly. “I wasn’t at the appropriate age to write about passionate love affairs and dramatic struggles, so I switched to comedy,” he adds.

Lee’s creative career has taken different shapes and forms – a result of his willingness to not over plan and make the most of any worthy opportunity. In the mid-1980s, he wrote as a columnist for local newspapers, contributing 500-word prose pieces in Chinese on various topics and in the 1990s, Lee even garnered a fair amount of fame as a program host for a talk show for Commercial Radio Hong Kong. Around the same time, he was invited to write fiction literature by Cosmos Books and channeled his very own John Grisham by opting to write legal fictions. His present creative career, which commenced around six years ago, stems from an invitation from two online news platforms – HK01 and Orange News – to write critiques on different forms of art and culture, varying from movies and plays to visual arts and cultural trends. He supplements this with his own Facebook page, named “HKArtMan” where he shares his views on the same in a personal capacity. In addition, Lee also takes on the role of performance organiser when time permits and has previously organised a play and a concert – something he believes Hong Kong is in more need of.

Hong Kong’s Art Scene

Lee believes that prior to the 2000s, the city’s art and cultural scene was plagued by apathy and was a severely overlooked area. In the 2000s, Lee feels the situation has improved but not enough. “There is more curiosity and awareness, but people do not do enough to support the development of art and culture. There is too much financial reliance on the government only,” he shares. “Hong Kong is in a serious need for rebranding,” he adds. “We are currently just a financial center – like Zurich or Luxembourg and relying too much on old industries like logistics and trading,” he explains. Lee envisions a Hong Kong that is on par with global cultural and financial hubs like London or New York City and believes moving towards intangible assets or intangible intellectual property such as the arts is crucial. “We need commercial energy to be put into the art and cultural circles and more money from private companies and investors. That way more people will feel encouraged to pursue artistic careers because they can earn a decent income, which will in turn drive Hong Kong’s art and cultural scene,” he shares. His ultimate dream is what he calls an “Art Economy for Hong Kong,” an environment whereby art becomes more than just a leisurely activity and can be pursued as a commercially viable career.

In order to help realise his vision for a more art-savvy Hong Kong, he plans on putting together a concert and a musical for export to the Greater Bay Area (GBA) next year. “If they are staged only in Hong Kong, there can be less than five shows. However, if I export them to eleven cities in the GBA region, I can stage sixty shows – it makes more sense as an economically sustainable activity,” he explains. Lee believes exporting Hong Kong’s artistic talent is key, if financial prosperity in the arts and cultures is to be achieved. He recalls Hong Kong’s former status as “Hollywood of the East”, a time when films made in the city were enjoyed fervently beyond the borders. Similarly, he is hopeful that other forms of home-made art will also someday be appreciated in different markets.

Critically Creative

For Lee himself, he is content with how his career and personality have shaped out to be. “People tell me as a lawyer I talk like an artist, and as an artist I talk like a lawyer,” he shares. “As a lawyer, I am more sentimental, humanitarian and expressive and as an artist, I always have a mental framework. Artists can be quite unorganised. I am very organised. I put bits and pieces under different headings and am good at fulfilling long-term artistic projects because as a lawyer you are always handling long term cases. You have to be systematic and strategic,” he explains.

Lee encourages lawyers to pursue a creative side too, albeit on a personal level – something he believes would only make them more professionally sought-after. “People think lawyers are checklist animals, I think they are more than that. There is a lot of creativeness and criticality involved in being a lawyer when we handle a case and we should keep those sides alive,” he shares. “There are two minds in demand nowadays – the creative mind and the critical mind. No matter what profession you are in, you should have both,” he adds. He is aware that evolving from executors who merely follow instructions to critical thinkers who ask questions and initiate change can cause adverse reactions – “People find this type of person to be very maa faan (annoying/troublesome), they know too much and ask too much,” he shares with a grin. “But it is important to stand out, both minds will help each other,” he adds.

As a consumer or spectator, his favourite types or forms of art include ballet, paintings by American artist Edward Hopper and the diminishing art of Cantonese opera. “I admire ballet because it is so physically challenging and difficult. I like paintings by Edward Hopper because they make me feel sad – his pieces are very poignant. And I treasure Cantonese opera because it is sadly disappearing. They use old Shakespearean style Chinese dialect which might someday vanish completely,” he explains.

Having enjoyed a rewarding career so far, with ups and downs, with legal wins and creative commendations in abundance, Lee has a particular memory that still lingers vividly. “Fifteen years ago, I was the Vice-Chairman of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. At that time, the famous movie director Johnnie To and I organised the first outdoor media art exhibition outside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui. The idea was to do some artistic projections on the external wall of the cultural centre and these projections were shut off by 11:00pm. I was at the exhibition till closing on the first day when a young boy came up to me, shortly past 11:00pm. He was 14-15 years old and he begged me to allow him into the exhibition area. He said his family is poor and he works at McDonalds at night. He lives in Tai Po and has come all the way to Tsim Sha Tsui to view the exhibition because he was so interested in what it might be like,” Lee recalls. Moved by the young boy’s passion and determination, he allowed him in as an exception. Till this date, Lee wonders what became of that young boy and whether he ended up pursuing something artistic. “I was so touched and amazed and I wonder how many boys and girls or men and women in Hong Kong have that kind of passion for something non-commercial, something artistic and spiritual,” he muses. If it fortunately turns out to be that the boy is one of our readers, Lee would be delighted to hear from you.

The Law Society of Hong Kong Journal

MLee

中文版 Chinese Version: 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/wo-de-2021nian-53673006?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=postshare

"Youth Dance"  Acknowledgement - 中國有嘻哈 official   https://youtu.be/PNlC__GiqaY

Movie: “Time” Trailer  Acknowledgement-安樂影片 Edko Films Ltd https://youtu.be/g0TT_mwq-DI

Interview of Petrina Fung and Patrick Tse  Acknowledgement – ATV 亞視數碼媒體  https://youtu.be/BJnMtmaLzwQ

[cinematicquack]

Contemporary Hollywood Cinema - Screening Journal

Week 2 - Star Studies

This was the first time I had watched Hail! Caesar, and I was not disappointed. I loved the use of genre conventions to convey character. Eddie Mannix is shrouded in dramatic lighting, similar to that of film noir. His character’s narration over the film both conveys genre but also establishes his gritty character and his role of attempting to solve the mystery behind his prestige actor’s disappearance. Hoby, an actor in Westerns, is filmed in many shots common of that genre. However, he gradually shifts into more romantic drama cinematography as his character is forced to change his image. The clever use of genre helps establish characters but also conveys narrative elements. The satirical approach to issues of the 1950s really makes this film an enjoyable timepiece which reflects on the scandals of Old Hollywood. From the subplot of secret communists, to the loopholes of star contracts, to the celebrity status stars began to have; the Coen brothers show a clear knowledge and interest in the strange evolution of the film industry. 

I enjoyed the readings this week as it showed many different ideas surrounding the star system. It was interesting to read about the differences in the star system for different genders. I already knew that most industries are unfair for women, however, I learnt more about the theoretical details of its unfairness. Laura Mulvey’s psychoanalytic insight into the male gaze was especially interesting. Her idea around scopophilia and how most female characters in classical cinema are objects to be viewed by male audiences. How subconsciously for men, femininity signifies castration anxiety; classical cinema deals with this threat by fetishising females, allowing male audiences to feel unthreatened by something they force their desires upon. Richard Dyer’s leading theories about star semiotics were very engaging. Reading into media text subtypes and how each star is a polysemy and as viewers of cinema, we engage with the stars which have meanings and ideologies we resonate with (each star’s star image). I enjoyed applying Dyer’s idea of the types of fits a star has to a role they play, it was interesting to see aspects of a star’s image be either emulated or be cast out in the characters they are cast as. 

I was nervous for the first lecture as I was unsure of how well I would engage with it. Fortunately, the pre-recorded lecture was extremely thought-provoking and kept me engrossed the entire time. I was happy that Dr Artt mentioned the Netflix series Hollywood as I was reminded of it whilst watching Hail! Caesar, each respectively shows an in-depth understanding of the industry whilst highlighting the deep-rooted issues it had and still have today. The lecture mainly reaffirmed my understanding of film history, as well as expand on many concepts from the readings. I liked the highlighting of parallels in actors’ careers, like Charlie Chaplin and Ben Stiller, who both have found success in their pairing of physical comedy and romance. Christine Geraghty’s three categories of stardom were intriguing as I felt it was an interesting way to look at the careers of actors; for example, Scarlett Johansson is more a ‘performer’, whereas Tilda Swinton is definitely ‘professional’. 

I really liked having clips to relate to the lecture discussions. I could see the clear transition from Chaplin’s older works to the new, more kind version of the tramp seen in The Circus. The parallel between the day-dream scene in The Circus to the repetitive imagination scene in High Fidelity shows us how the comedy genre has evolved but still has the same themes of romantic jealousy which were so common in Chaplin’s films. Singing in the Rain is such a feelgood movie, seeing this clip really brightened my day, and I may have ended up watching the entire film. I think it highlights perfectly the enigma of the star, how we as an audience will never really know the private lives of actors, and yet as fans, we are still infatuated with them. It also conveys, similarly to Hail! Caesar, how the industry will change a star’s image to fit an American ideal. This also refers back to the idea of each star being a polysemy of ideologies which we subconsciously acknowledge as audiences.

The tutorial was a great way to consolidate my learning, as well as hear my peers’ opinions. When considering the star images of Clooney, my group suggested he is someone whom mums love, a token handsome guy whose charming and quick-witted. Whereas Tilda Swinton is a professional, well-respected actress who is known for her range of quirky characters in mainly auteur films. My group and I discussed in detail how Channing Tatum was cast in this film. Usually typecast as the American dream/hero, he is instead changed into the main villain of the film, being a secret communist during the height of The Red Scare. It was definitely a selective fit for this role, and I think that that is what made his character so interesting despite the lack of screen-time. I was definitely surprised to see Tatum go from tap-dancing on a bar to being welcomed upon a Russian submarine.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

hey there! so, i strive to be philosophically consistent and i think i need some insight: what would be the point of critizising stuff if you ultimately couldnt claim that some content is inherently bad? why would any of us want to critizise anything at all if problematic content is always allowed to exist? how can i ever say 'X show is mysoginistic' if i also say 'noncon/loli/etc is acceptable'? im not trying to test u with these q's, i just want to hear some other opinions bc im confused. x

these are good questions tbh. I’ll try to keep the rambling to a reasonable length for once. but the really short answer to all three of the questions you posed is 

it’s all about context.

question 1:

what would be the point of critizising stuff if you ultimately couldnt claim that some content is inherently bad?

First let’s define the words ‘bad’ and ‘inherently’. (This phrase gets used so much in anti parlance because it’s ill-defined and vague and therefore perfect for wrecking debate attempts.) in the context of the rest of your ask, I think I’ll define ‘bad’ as ‘immoral’. (Therefore, ‘good’ means ‘morally upright’.) Also, to make it clear: ‘inherent’ is ‘innate’. 

to say something is ‘inherently bad’ is to say that the quality of ‘badness’ is inseparable from the thing. so the core of this question is: can fiction be innately immoral? and if not, why would you critique it?

IMO, because fictional content is fictional, and thus unverifiable, no one fictional work can ever have an inherent moral value. However, critique is absolutely valuable as a supported opinion (though it cannot be a verifiably correct truth).

There’s debate as to whether humans have an inborn moral compass. If they do, then it’s possible that certain actions can be innately immoral. Deliberately harming another person’s physical being by assault, rape, or murder would certainly count as innately immoral. Lying is immoral; stealing is immoral. There may be good reasons for some of these things (though not all) - harming or killing in self-defense/in battle, lying to protect or for social grease, stealing to survive - but they are not moral actions.

Similarly, a character in a fictional work might act in an immoral way. But does that make the fictional work itself immoral? 

The answer will depend on the person. Some people will feel that any morally gray action in a story means the fictional work is endorsing immorality. Others might feel the work depicts the acts but condemns them. Others still will feel it’s simply an aspect to a good fictional story, and yet others may feel that the work is trying to do one thing but actually accomplishing another.  

And they will all be right. Each person’s individual understanding, created by how they read the work, their personal experiences, their cultural background, their personality, their identity - will come together to create an entirely unique experience with any fictional work, and each person’s final opinion on the work can never, ever be wrong.*

If the only reason for criticizing a work is to determine whether the work is good or bad on some universal scale, then yes - it’s useless to bother. no scale is actually universal when it comes to fiction. But if the purpose of critique is to give a reasoned opinion and appeal to others to agree with you, then criticism is still valid as part of ongoing, honest debate about what makes fiction ‘good’ to you and people who think similarly to you.

In short, no crit of fiction can truly encompass every individual experience of a piece of fiction, so no crit will ever be the ‘absolute truth’ any more than any story will be ‘innately good’. it’s all about context, and everyone has individual context when it comes to fiction.

*an opinion can be misinformed or lack information, so some opinions may be more valid than others, but an opinion is an opinion: it’s not wrong. It’s personal.

question 2: 

why would any of us want to critizise anything at all if problematic content is always allowed to exist?

because fiction may be allowed to exist - but so is your opinion of the fictional work that has content you find problematic!

Just because fiction is allowed to exist doesn’t mean you can’t try to dissuade people from consuming it. There’s nothing wrong with deciding you hate something and telling everyone that you hate it and you think it’s awful and bad in every way and nobody should ever look at it.

However. (when is there not one!)

It is the responsibility of a critic or reviewer to review with respect, particularly in the realm of fanworks. Just as a creator should be held responsible for tagging their work with the correct pairings and warnings (or make it clear that they choose not to warn to avoid spoilers and consumers should be aware the work might have upsetting content), a reviewer should be held responsible for:

keeping their review focused on the work, not the creator, and 

being clear that their review is an opinion, not fact.

keeping their review focused on the work - depiction is not endorsement. there is no way to know, unless a creator states it directly, that their work is a direct reflection of their personal beliefs. Saying ‘this story contains [x] and therefore the author is an [x]ist’ is defamation.

being clear that their review is an opinion - A reviewer can use facts, their personal experiences, and their knowledge of the creator’s other works as backups for their opinion, but their opinion will still just be an opinion. people who assert their opinion is a fact are being disingenuous and shut down discussion rather than stimulating it, which is a shame because more discussion leads to be better understanding of why a work is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or whatever.

unless one is the appointed spokesperson of a group, and that group has agreed that whatever that person says about a work is their collective opinion, no opinion speaks for an entire group. if a reviewer asserts ‘I am [x], and this work upsets me because [reasons related to being [x]],’ that does not mean that everyone else who is [x] will feel the same way. (expecting a marginalized or hurt individual to be the spokesperson of everyone who shares that marginalization/hurt is actually a form of stereotyping and really shitty!)

When reviewers don’t review responsibly, particularly when giving negative reviews, they can incite personal hatred of the creator and fear/hatred of the work itself. Depending on the situation and severity, it can even lead to mob-law-style dogpiles and attempts to scare the creator into either taking the work down or running away themselves - a form of group censorship, to be frank.

In short: critique must be kept in the context of opinions, or it stifles conversation and leads to censorship in situations where discussion and education would be more effective and valuable.

question 3:

how can i ever say ‘X show is mysoginistic’ if i also say ‘noncon/loli/etc is acceptable’?

because it’s okay - and, maybe paradoxically, more logically consistent - to have different stances on the same subject depending on the context. 

you can’t apply the same rules equally to all people, all situations, or all experiences and expect to get fair results (and if you try, you’ll inevitably bring down the most harm on the people who need the most help). For a simplistic example, if you taxed everybody the same income percentage, it would look fair. But more of a poor person’s income goes directly to living expenses than that of a rich person’s income. If you tax the rich person 10%, they won’t feel it in any want of necessary food, clothing, or shelter, but the poor person almost definitely would.

what I’m trying to say is that it’s acceptable - even ideal - to apply different standards (and different scales of reaction) to fanworks than to published books, than to high-circulation published books, than to TV shows, than to internationally-released movies, than to real life (etc etc). There’s several reasons for this:

the scale of impact is widely different. Fanfics rarely get even a million unique views, even after years of circulation. A tv show reaches millions of pairs of eyes every week.

the context is widely different. Transformative fandom, a relatively small space, has a disproportionate number of non-straight/non-cis participants, is overwhelmingly female/afab, and probably has an unusually high number of survivors, not to mention relatively high awareness of social issues that impact them. The average audience member for a fanwork is therefore a very different one from that of a large-scale media release.

the vulnerability differential is widely different. Social power in fandom is mostly determined by popularity, but this is a very volatile source of power and can disappear in an instant. A single fanwork creator, therefore, is about the same level of vulnerable to a rumor, a callout, a complaint as everyone else in fandom (very). The vulnerability of a movie director, on the other hand, is relatively low. If hundreds of thousands of people rallied behind callouts and expressed their anger and hatred of a director, it probably won’t make any meaningful impact on their output or their personal life without outside factors.

So to use your example: You may be bothered by misogynistic content regardless of what you consume - fanwork or TV show or otherwise, but if you call it out in the TV show vs call it out in the fanwork, you’re going to have a very different impact level (not much on the TV show/its creators, but a lot on the fanwork/its creator).

Conversely, nonconsensual sex in a TV show reaches not only a much larger audience than a fanwork, but also a very different audience. For the TV show: a smaller percentage will have experienced sexual assault and the level of education about sexual assault will generally be lower. Also, unless the show explicitly warns for rape, it’s possible some people won’t even realize it’s noncon depending on how it’s portrayed - whereas fanwork ettiquette demands tagging and warnings. In other words, noncon portrayals in TV shows are more likely to send a damaging message than noncon portrayals in fic - fic, which has warnings on it, reaches a much smaller audience, and has an audience that is more likely to judge the content on personal experience and education than the TV show audience.** 

Basically, it’s not contradictory to take a different tack of behavior to the same issue in different spheres, and it’s not contradictory to decide that you’re okay with content that is potentially damaging existing in some spaces but not in others. That’s putting your opinions and morals into context and changing how you act on them.

In fact, it’s downright important to do this. When you don’t change your response level or moderate your judgement in consideration of relative power and/or impact, the people who are the most likely to get run over are those who are at a disadvantage already: LGBT/queer people, black and brown people, immigrants, survivors, women, etc. Who is going to be more hurt and scared by people coming down hard on noncon fic: the rape survivor who wrote it for personal therapeutic value or the person who wrote it for titillation and fun? I bet you can guess.

the title of this blog is related to fanfic specifically because the hard stance I take on censorship is one I’m comfortable taking in the realm of fanworks, but I think the line - already a bit fuzzy at this low impact space - gets blurrier and blurrier the higher impact you go. Where does responsible depiction outweigh the freedom to portray? At what point does tolerating a fictional content become inappropriate? Where’s the line between fiction and propaganda?

These are all great questions to ask, but in the meantime, I’ll be down here saying that fanworks - lowest of low impact, plastered with warnings, and with the empowering effect of giving largely marginalized people a voice outweighing the danger of portrayals of immoral things - should always be free to exist.

**again you run into the issue that every fictional portrayal of something will have a unique interaction with every individual. What one person finds pornographic and harmful might be therapeutic to another. But with mass media the question of ‘does the message this sends amplify already-existing harmful opinions?’ becomes more important and ethical to ask.