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fe8meta · 5 years ago

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The War’s Legacy

As a volunteer archivist at a local historical site, I’ve worked closely with books and documents largely between 150~250 years old. (If you’re curious, mostly regarding the period between the American Revolution to the Civil War, plus the anti-slavery movement. There’s also more “domestic” stuff like agriculture, science, mathematics, and religion.)

It got me thinking: In Magvel, how will the war, and the people who participated in it, be remembered? Most characters have a good portion of their lives left to live after the war too, but for those who are remembered down the line, their participation in the war will probably be their biggest accomplishment.

To start things off: more likely than not, anyone who wasn’t royalty or an important military figure is probably going to get forgotten, especially if fighting in the war was their only achievement.

(From my experience as an archivist, I’ve noticed that a great deal of people who were seen as the big movers and thinkers during their time have been lowered to one-note and forgettable in some 150-ish years of history. That’s not a lot of time!)

I think the list of characters who are remembered decades after their deaths on a continental scale (some characters may remain important figures in their own communities) would be the royals, the generals (Seth plus the Imperial Generals), and the Demon King (plus his cult).

The Royals

Ephraim: Regarding the war, Ephraim will probably get his war strategies and accomplishments written about. I expect a great deal of historians (particularly Renaian ones) debating his decision to abandon his homeland and bring the fight into Grado, though his later decisions will probably receive praise.

Eirika: Honestly? I think she’ll largely receive praise from future historians. Despite getting tricked at Renvall and the blunder of losing the Sacred Stone (on her route), I think historians would agree that her calculations were solid based on the information she knew at the time. Even if she had Seth advising her, she had no formal training in tactics or the art of war, making her achievements even more impressive.

~ / ~ / ~

Innes: Like Eirika, I think he’d be validated by historians, particularly for being the only one to actually predict and prepare for a wartime scenario. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but based on what we know of him story-wise, he probably would go down as one of the best leaders of his time.

Tana: She’s gutsy and I think she’ll at least become a popular figure for young women. Some historians may lambast her earlier captures attributable to her inexperience, but hey, if she got out alive than it’s not too bad. I think later in life, being largely free to do whatever she wants (within reason), she’d continue onto a path of public service, which she can probably gather great acclaim for.

~ / ~ / ~

L’Arachel: I think a lot of attention will go towards her theatrics. If you go with the idea that L’Arachel doesn’t actually lead her country (see the Solo Endings JP vs. EN post for details), I think her relationship with the other royals and how she’s involved in continental politics will be the primary focus in biographies. (She also, perhaps not coincidentally, has supports with all the other ruling royals, discounting Tana as she canonically never lands in a leadership position.)

Joshua: Joshua’s reputation will be very, very mixed down the line. He’s still has wanderlust and a gambling addiction, and regardless of his accomplishments as a king and Jehanna’s glorious revival, neither of those traits are a particularly good look. Not to mention that he abandoned his duty as prince for a solid 10 years, and then left Jehanna to its own devices again while going to stop the Demon King.

Even in Joshua’s dialogue after the final battle, he talks about returning to Jehanna in an almost resigned manner; no doubt he knows full well that he might not be received with open arms.

~ / ~ / ~

Lyon: Oh boy, what to say about Lyon. There are a lot of different ways this can go, branching from 3 options: Lyon’s involvement in the war is revealed in full, Lyon’s involvement is revealed but doctored to paint him in a more sympathetic light, or it gets entirely covered up/omitted and he goes down in history as an unfortunate casualty of the war.

No matter how you slice the first two options, Lyon’s legacy would definitely be extremely mixed, leaning towards the negative side. Not only is he on the wrong side of history, he’s also forced basically half the continent into the wrong side of history and ruined their military and did some very amoral things (reviving his father to use as a puppet, and by extension lying to the public, etc). Even the best doctoring can probably only redeem Lyon’s reputation from “the deepest depths of the sewers” to “neck-deep in the sewers.”

In the case where Lyon’s involvement in the war is covered up, it’s still only a matter of time before someone figures out the truth. With enough time, it can be relegated to a highly plausible and hotly-debated theory, but even so, it’s simply a matter of time. For an additional dose of irony, in this scenario, perhaps Grado nationalists down the line twist Lyon’s war into something “assertive” and depict it as the “correct” thing to do, when it was really anything but.

Vigarde: He’s in the same boat as Lyon. It really hinges on how the royals choose to depict Lyon’s situation to the public, because that will directly affect how Vigarde is seen. There’s little doubt that puppet!Vigarde’s actions probably destroyed popular opinion of him during the War. Whether he is redeemed on account of his situation or not is up for debate.

(Because the game doesn’t delve into Fado, Hayden, or Mansel much, I don’t have enough input to say how they’ll be seen by future historians.)

The Generals

Seth: He’s going to go down in history as a badass, let’s be real here. Took an attack from Valter himself to protect Eirika, didn’t let the injury debilitate him from fighting on the frontlines, mentored Eirika in the art of war during life-or-death battles, guided the twins on their journey, and continued helping them after the war’s end. Guy got things done, regardless of his personal sentiment about failing to protect King Fado.

Syrene: Technically a commander and not a general, but close enough that I’ll consider her. She... honestly doesn’t do that much on-screen. Doubtlessly she’ll be best remembered (on the battlefield) for being overpowered by the remnant of Grado’s forces, but at least she lived and (by the player’s discretion) kept all the villagers safe, so that’s something. At the very least, a coward she is not.

Carlyle: He’s going down in infamy. Like, his story can be crudely summed up as “I was loyal to Queen Ismaire partially because I wanted to bang her.” Yeah, that is not a good look. There isn’t even any interesting speculation or interpretations to make of his situation. He probably ruined the reputation of the Jehannan Army while he was at it.

Honestly, the only thing that would salvage his reputation is the fact that everyone who heard his confession is dead by the end of that battle. (Technically the map was a Seize Throne and not a Rout, but let’s be real -- we killed those guards.)

~ / ~ / ~

Duessel: The only Grado general to make it out alive. He’ll probably get a mixed reaction; those who praise him argue that he made the morally correct choice and had the nation’s best interests at heart. Some may criticize him for not acting sooner, while others may very well despise him as a traitor to the nation.

Selena: Another set of mixed reactions, though inverse from Duessel’s. She remained loyal to Vigarde to the very end, but people will debate where a knight’s loyalty should lie. It would also invite much debate over the ethics of Vigarde’s recruitment methods and whether it was a thinly-veiled manipulation tactic that citizens from poorer areas will fall for because it’s the only way to improve their livelihoods.

Glen: He’s like Syrene, except he died without doing much. If someone is interested in finding out more about him before his death, at least they have Cormag to interview. Depending on whether his two adjutants survived against Valter’s goons, if someone tracked them down, they might get a story out of them as well. That said, his history with Valter would probably be of great interest to Valter’s biographers.

~ / ~ / ~

Valter: Historians, psychologists, and scholars will have a field day with him and his circumstances. From his upbringing to his descent into madness and subsequent exile, to his reinstatement and brutality during the war before his ultimate death, there is a lot to unpack with him. People tend to have morbid curiosities and oh, will Valter sate that appetite.

Caellach: Caellach will probably be praised for being good at what he did even if he was ultimately on the wrong side of history. Since he started off as a mercenary, I feel like people won’t judge him too harshly. His potential betrayal and murder of Aias will be an interesting chapter to write about, though, since historians may have access to more knowledge on their pre-war relationship that we players don’t have.

Riev: He’s ugly, a Demon King cultist, and directly responsible for Lyon’s (and by extension, Grado’s) downfall. He’s going to be reviled for sure, though he will spark some interesting discussion relating to his history with the Rausten Church. A lot of speculation on how he came to became an adherent of the Demon King... or not, depending how whether that kind of talk is suppressed.

After all, if a former bishop converted, it not only challenges the legitimacy of the Rausten Church, it would also pique the interest of those who want to see what made Riev change his mind. And should someone also adopt his ideology, the continent can’t take another Demon King revival attempt.

Which leads me to...

The Demon King

Now, this will be a little game called “How many generations will it take before the Demon King gets relegated to a legend that no one believes in again.”

It’s also pretty important that the Demon King is not completely destroyed; he just no longer has his huge menacing body to use and will have to make do with those fragile human flesh sacks. But his soul is still intact, and if nothing is done to get rid of it for good, it’s setting up for a Part 3.

Like with Lyon, how information about the Demon King is handled by the characters after the world will probably have a huge impact. Not to mention the many implications the circumstances around his possession of Lyon has. Dark/ancient magic will most certainly face a resurgent wave of discrimination, far more than seen before. (Magvel was, from what we could see, largely apathetic about dark magic before Lyon’s attempts to redeem its name. Ironically, his actions will rekindle hatred towards it.)

As aforementioned, educating people on the Demon King and how dangerous he is may help ensure that nobody tries to mess with him again. On the other hand, it may inspire copycats who for whatever reason want the Demon King to be revived. (The game also never followed up on the implication that there’s a cult that worships the Demon King; we killed Riev and Novala, and destroyed Fomortiis’ body, but there may still be more members lurking in the dark.)

Meanwhile, trying to bury information about Fomortiis can also backfire down the line, especially if people don’t learn what the Sacred Stone is for and one day crack the seal open for one reason or another. (And we saw how well keeping the true Stone hidden behind trinkets while keeping its wearer in the dark of its true purpose went.)

This is making me imagine Demon King apologists down the line that provide an “alternative history” about the war and how it’s all some ancient conspiracy to lock him away and he “isn’t actually bad, just misunderstood”...

Oh hey, isn’t that the direction Dragalia Lost’s main story is going in?

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misakishishido · 7 years ago

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Project #3 - Android/Clone (Teaser)

Hello hello :D

I hope everyone has seen my Project #1 post prior to this but if not, please do so here, as I won’t go through most, if not all, of what I’ve said over there haha. Sorry for being lazy.

Anyways. This is the third ‘project’ from my long lost document of drafts I had prepared in the past for WMatsui that I have decided to revive especially when I think it’s well... sort of a waste to never publish it. I spent quite a lot of time on this back then and what you will be seeing is pretty much a part of the actual first chapter of the story.

Moreover, I decided to revive this project in conjunction with the release of the Playstation 4 game Detroit:Become Human. Seems like a good time to put this out there especially if you readers out there have actually played the game and loved the whole android plot though I highly doubt mine will be that much related to existential crisis nor the state of the world in the near future and whether having androids is a good or bad idea.

Then again mine’s more on cloning so... I dunno why I just HAD to mention the game. Oh well~

This is basically, tl;dr, a love story for mainly JuriSaku *laughs*, so no deep stuff. I hope. Maybe sprinkles of it, who knows? :v Also note how I say mainly ‘cuz there may be other ships in this thing with Sayanee relevant in it hehehe.

Okay, I think I’ve said my piece. Again, it’d be great if you all can let me know which project you’d like to read as a priority so I can be a lot more focused on one than splitting my attention to all three and screwing things up in the process ><

Hope you enjoy this little teaser!

“I’m back.”

“Welcome back, Jurina dear.”

Matsui Jurina, an adolescent who had just started her first year of high school who sported striking red frame glasses that protected her cool black, but slightly lifeless, orbs, shrugged off her backpack which made a soft thump onto the floor as she swiftly took off her shoes and handed her mother a folder.

“Got my results. Straight As as promised.”

Her mother flipped open the folder and read through Jurina’s results, smiling at what her daughter had produced and gave her a loving pat on the head.

“Well done, Jurina dear. I’m sure your father would be proud of—“

“Don’t bother telling him. As if he cares about me anyways,” Jurina quickly grabbed her bag that was still lying near the entrance and walked past her mother when suddenly her mother grabbed her by the hand, stopping her daughter in her tracks.

“Jurina… about your father. He has something urgent to tell you at the lab. Please go see him.”

Jurina, as bright as she is, noticed her mother’s eyes turning slightly reddish as if she was holding back her tears. She knew straight away it was not going to be good news. She sighed and just gave a quick nod to her mother before heading towards her father’s lab which was in the basement of her bungalow.

She used to be close with her father until one day he got too immersed with his research that he began neglecting both his wife and daughter and had always stayed cooped up within his laboratory with a few of his assistants that would come every day but leave every evening. It all started when his thesis for cloning was recognised by the government and not only he got a status in society because of that, but he also got more and more projects relating to cloning research by the government which made his life rather hectic, hence causing a rift between his wife and daughter.

Jurina’s mother was more understanding but Jurina, being the only child of the family, wanted to feel even more loved deep down, and acknowledged by her father. After all, when she was asked to write about what she wanted to be when she grows up when she was still a kid, she had made being a scientist her first choice due to how cool she thought her father was and then a teacher as her second choice since she liked teaching people things that they were having difficulty with. She used good academic records as an attempt to impress her father but to no avail. He used to praise her back in what, kindergarten? And it all ended after that.

At the lab, she could see all of her father’s assistants busy with their work. Some were running around from machine to machine, some were busy at their own ‘station’ tapping away on the keyboards before them and some were busy asking one another questions, obviously relating to the experiment at hand.

It was just another normal day for Matsui Jurina’s father, Matsui Junichiro, a man who has the status of a world renowned scientist. Jurina, despite her strained feelings towards her father, would always be in awe whenever she stepped into his lab. It wasn’t every house that had a huge laboratory with huge machines or capsules that could fit people in their basement. Sure, she was thankful she was living in such a special home provided by the government but… she still wanted that one single element that her father had not given her expressly in a long time.

Jurina felt a pair of eyes which noticed her presence in the busy room and quickly nudged the head of the experiment that was in front of him. Jurina’s father turned around abruptly and gave Jurina a stern look, a look that would always make Jurina clench her fists involuntarily. Don’t give me that look… stupid dad…

“Jurina. You’re here.”

“What do you want?” Jurina shot back, returning the look that her father is giving her but the latter did not pay his daughter’s current attitude to mind and just closed his eyes calmly.

“You will be leaving this house for the course of six years and will be studying in UK.”

The adolescent could not believe what she just heard, “W-What did you just—“

“Your aunt has already been notified and you will be staying with her,” Jurina’s father turned his back on his daughter after finishing his piece.

“O-Oi! You just blurt all that without telling me a good reason why?!” Jurina exclaimed.

“This project… was personally asked by a government councilman, as well as my best friend,” he looked over his shoulder with cold eyes, “It required your DNA. And the clone to be produced would be you, six years earlier.”

“Y-You’re cloning… me…?”

“And as such, there could not be two Matsui Jurina living under the same roof. Especially when this project is for a ‘patient’ suffering from anthropophobia.”

Fear of people… “Why me and not someone else?!” Jurina pressed on.

“Because when you were ten, you were quite the Good Samaritan. Many have learned good qualities from you and adored you as a perfect example. An angel. My only daughter too, of course,” he turned back to face his daughter once more, “… Henceforth, you are perfect for this experiment.”

“That wasn’t even a good explanation darn it!” Jurina felt like wanting to storm out of the lab immediately after giving her father a few punches but held it in, inevitably bursting into tears in the process.

The man did not budge but instead, handed Jurina an iPad that an assistant quickly handed to him after he had subtly nodded. Jurina bit her lips, looking into the screen and a video footage of a young girl was shown. She assumed she was about six and felt chills down her spine when the footage showed how violently she acted in front of a group of people who tried to approach her, which included footage outside of her home and inside, where it seemed like a family gathering. Another footage showed how she was in her room. She would be at a certain corner of her room with the lights off, hugging her legs without doing anything, just, sitting there. Her parents enter her room periodically and individually. Fortunately, she does not retaliate violently and acts rather lifelessly when her mother feeds her or cleans her up.

Jurina pitied the poor girl. Just what happened to her that made her this way?

“The patient’s name is Miyawaki Sakura. She had been diagnosed with that phobia after being kidnapped once. I heard they were child rapists. But her father, being a councilman, managed to cover up the story and prevented any leakage of the story being published on the media. The men have been jailed but the horrifying experience she had to go through remains,” Jurina’s father began explaining after the video repeated itself.

“It would explain as much then…” Jurina’s sympathies for the girl managed to overwhelm her anger and frustration towards her father.

If cloning me would help her and give her a brighter future… I would definitely sacrifice myself... even if it’s for someone I don’t know… but that’s what I would have thought as the ‘me’ from years ago... now I......

“You do understand the situation now then?”

Jurina looked upwards into her father’s eyes before looking away, having mixed feelings circling around within her, “… When am I leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he handed the iPad to an assistant who just passed by him, “Your contribution would help society and change the life of this girl if everything is successful. You do realize that, don’t you?”

Jurina ignored his question and turned around, facing the exit, “… I hope your experiment succeeds. Goodbye… Father,” and she left, taking big steps towards the door.

“… Sir, weren’t you a bit too direct with your daughter just now…?” A female assistant squeaked when she approached him. She had heard everything, working rather close to where the father and daughter were conversing a moment ago.

“A scientist must let go of his emotions and attachments if he wants to succeed. Do not pester me with insignificant familial issues. Get back to work!” He glared at the woman and she quickly bowed apologetically and returned to her ‘station’. Jurina’s father massaged his temple and felt a burning sensation starting in his eyes.

There is no time for tears. This project must succeed.

#ske48 #hkt48 #matsui jurina #miyawaki sakura #jurisaku #fanfic

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elegantshapeshifter · 7 years ago

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Who Was Aradia? The History and Development of a Legend

The Pomegranate: The Journal of Pagan Studies, Issue 18, Feb. 2002.

by Sabina Magliocco California State University, Northridge

The author wishes to thank Ronald Hutton and Chas S. Clifton for their helpful critiques of an earlier draft of this work.

Aradia is familiar to most contemporary Pagans and Witches as the principal figure in Charles G. Leland’s Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, first published in 1899. Leland presents her as the daughter of Diana, the goddess of the moon, by her brother Lucifer, “the god of the Sun and of the Moon, the god of Light” (Leland, 1899, 1998:1), who is sent to earth to teach the poor to resist the oppression of the wealthy classes through magic and witchcraft. Through Leland’s work, Aradia’s name and legend became central to the Witchcraft revival. Between 1950 and 1960, “Aradia” was probably the secret name of the Goddess in Gardnerian Craft (it has since been changed), and she has also given her name to numerous contemporary Witchcraft traditions (Clifton, 1998:73).

Leland’s Aradia also inspired a number of 20th century works of Pagan literature. In a privately published electronic document entitled The Gospel of Diana [which according to Silvio Baldassare originated as a spoof of the Gnostic Gospels (Baldassare, 1997:15)], Aidan Kelly expands on Leland’s idea of Aradia as a religious leader and heroine of an Italian peasant resistance. Kelly’s Aradia, however, is a notably erotic character; according to her teachings, the sexual act becomes not only an expression of the divine life force, but an act of resistance against all forms of oppression and the primary focus of ritual. Kelly’s document has not achieved broad diffusion in contemporary Pagan circles, however. Much more influential in the perpetuation of Aradia’s legend is the work of Raven Grimassi. Grimassi, the author of a series of popular books on Stregheria, or Italian-American Witchcraft, presents Aradia as a wise woman who lived in Italy during the 14th century, and who brought about a revival of the Old Religion. He claims to practice a tradition founded by Aradia’s followers (Grimassi, 1995:xviii). In Hereditary Witchcraft, Grimassi expands on Leland’s version and the material he presented in Ways of the Strega by adding a chapter on Aradia’s teachings (Grimassi, 1999:191-201), which include a series of predictions about the future of humankind and the return of the Old Religion (1999:207-208). After Aradia’s mysterious disappearance, her twelve disciples spread her gospel, explaining the diffusion of the Old Religion throughout Italy and Europe (1999:203-210).

But who was Aradia? Was she the legendary figure of Leland’s Gospel, or a 14th century teacher of the Craft, as Grimassi proposes? Or is her story more complicated? In this paper, I explore the roots of the legend of Aradia, and in the process attempt to shed light on the formation of some of the most important motifs in the legendcomplex surrounding witchcraft, both traditional and contemporary. While my conclusions differ from those of Leland, Kelly and Grimassi, they may reveal a surprising possibility underlying the legend that has not been considered before. My approach is grounded in the academic discipline of folklore, which regards stories about historical or alleged historical figures as legends. A legend is a story set in the real world about an extraordinary or numinous event. Legends are typically told as true, with many features that root them in a specific time and place and lend them authenticity; but they are not necessarily believed by all who tell them. In fact, according to legend scholars Linda Degh and Andrew Vazsonyi, it is the tension between belief and disbelief that keeps legends alive and circulating, as each new listener must decide “Is this true? Could this have happened?” (Degh and Vazsonyi, 1976). Within any given community, there are legend believers and disbelievers; our community is, of course, no exception when it comes to this particular legend. The truth content of legends—that is, how closely they correspond to actual historical events— can vary widely; although some contain a kernel of reality, many legends are “true” only in the most metaphorical sense, in that they are an accurate reflection of popular attitudes, values and morality at a given time and place.

Legends can take many forms. Most typically, they occur as narratives, either in the first person (“This actually happened to me”) or third person (“This actually happened to a friend of a friend/ long ago, etc.”). Logically, many legends start out as first person accounts and become third person accounts; but just as often, a narrator may retell a third person account as though it had actually happened to him/her, making the story more vivid for the audience. Legends can also exist as simple statements (“The house on the hill is haunted”), and occasionally become dramatic enactments known as “ostension” (Degh and Vazsonyi, 1986), which I will describe later at some length. Legends appear in multiple variants; no one variant is any more correct than any other. At times, legends may cluster together to form what folklorists call a legend complex: a group of interrelated legends and beliefs centered around a particular theme. The multiple legend complexes centering around witchcraft are among the most enduring in Western history. Legends are extraordinarily responsive to social change; in fact, they are one of the most sensitive indices of transformations in cultural values and worldview (Dundes, 1971; Magliocco, 1993). For that reason, it is imperative to understand them in the cultural, political and social context in which they appear. In considering the development of the legend of Aradia, I will be applying all of the above principles, but especially the latter. My goal is to show how each successive historical era added and subtracted elements to this tale in keeping with the cultural preoccupations of the time, giving us not only today’s concept of Aradia, but also a much broader legend complex surrounding the nature of witchcraft itself.

ORIGINS: HERODIAS AND DIANA

The origin of the name “Aradia” is veiled in mystery. I have not been able to find it in written form before the publication of Leland’s Gospel in 1899. However, Leland himself equates Aradia with the legendary figure Herodias, a central character in the development of the witchcraft legend complex in Europe (Leland, 1899/1998:1). According to the Gospel of St. Matthew, Herodias was the sister-in-law of King Herod, the wife of his brother Philip (Matthew 14:3-12). Apparently she hated John the Baptist, and asked Herod to arrest John when the holy man was found in his dominion. But Herodias wanted John dead, so she concocted a plan in which she urged her daughter Salome to dance for King Herod. In exchange, the girl was to demand the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The plan worked: Salome danced, Herod delivered, and here the gospel stops. But according to an early Christian legend derived from the gospel, when Salome saw the head brought before her, she had a fit of remorse, and began to weep and bemoan her sin. A terrible wind began to blow from the saint’s mouth, so strong that it blew the famous dancer into the air, where she is condemned to wander forever (Cattabiani, 1994:208). Since in Roman usage, the wives and daughters of a house were commonly known by the name of the male head of the household, it is easy to see how Salome became confused with her mother Herodias. In medieval Italian, Herodias is rendered as “Erodiade,” only a short linguistic step away from Aradia.

One of the earliest mentions of Herodias is in the work of Raterius of Liegi, Bishop of Verona (890-974 CE). He laments that many believe that Herodias, wife of Herod, is a queen or a goddess, and say that one third of the earth is under her charge (Bonomo, 1959:19). Herodias gets linked with Diana in the Canon Episcopi, a document attributed to the Council of Ancyra in 314 CE, but probably a much later forgery, since the earliest written record of it appears around 872 CE (Caro Baroja, 1961:62). Regino, Abbot of Pr¸m, writing in 899 CE, cites the Canon, telling bishops to warn their flocks against the false beliefs of women who think they follow “Diana the pagan goddess, or Herodias” on their night-time travels. These women believed they rode out on the backs of animals over long distances, following the orders of their mistress who called them to service on certain appointed nights. Three centuries later, Ugo da San Vittore, a 12th century Italian abbot, refers to women who believe they go out at night riding on the backs of animals with “Erodiade,” whom he conflates with Diana and Minerva (Bonomo, 1959:18-19).

In each of these cases, legends about women who travel in spirit at night following Herodias or Diana are being recorded by clerics whose agenda is to eradicate what they see as false beliefs. It is difficult to gauge whether these reports represent a wide diffusion of the legends in north-central Italy and southern Germany between the 9th and 12th centuries, or whether the authors of early medieval decrees and encyclicals simply quoted each other, reproducing the same material. However, the work of German historian Wolfgang Behringer demonstrates that legends of night-flying societies, including followers of Diana, were in oral circulation in the western Alps (a region that now includes parts of Germany, Switzerland and Italy) in the 16th century, and probably well before it as well (Behringer, 1998:52-59). Herodias appears in these legends, as in the New Testament, as a symbol of wantonness (so she remained; as late as the 19th century, prostitutes in Paris were euphemistically referred to by Eliphas Levy as les filles d’Herodiade, “the daughters of Herodias”)—but also as a tragic figure, condemned to wander through the air forever as punishment for her sins. Regino equates her with Diana, and Ugo adds Minerva; we cannot know, based on the evidence, if this was their own interpretation, formed as a result of their educated knowledge of Roman mythology, or whether tellers themselves were merging Herodias with other Roman goddesses in their narratives. It is telling, in any case, that pagan goddesses are being syncretized with one of the most wicked characters in the New Testament.

Whether the association was of scholarly origin or arose from oral tradition, Herodias and Diana are linked in folk legend from the 9th century CE onward; and it is through Diana that the connection to witchcraft is formed. The goddess Diana is associated with witchcraft from early Classical Roman literature. She was often conflated with Selene (a deity from Asia Minor) and Hecate, all three of whom were associated with the moon. Hecate was also the queen of the spirits of the dead, present at tombs and at the hearth, where pre-Roman peoples buried their ancestors. At night she would appear at crossroads, followed by her train of spirits flying through the air and her terrifying, howling dogs (Caro Baroja, 1961:26). Folklore about Diana’s night rides may be a permutation of earlier tales about Hecate and the rade of the unquiet dead, which survived in Europe well into the middle ages and, in northern Europe, fused with the legend of the wild hunt. All three goddesses were known for helping witches: Horace, writing about the witch Canidia, has her invoke “night and Diana, ye faithful witnesses of all my enterprises” to assist her in thwarting her enemies (Horace, Epode 5, vv.49-54; cited in Caro Baroja, 1961:26). In Roman times, women of all social classes worshipped Diana on the kalends of August at her sanctuary near Lake Nemi. Her rituals were conducted at night; the lake was ringed by torches. Archeologists have found votive offerings of tablets seeking Diana’s aid as well as clay statuettes of mother and child (Diana protected women in childbirth) and of uteri, as well as horned stags representing Actaeon, the youth whose desire the goddess punished by transforming him into a stag. Since the rites were women’s mysteries, little information remains to us about their nature (Bernstein, 2000:154). However, we do know that men were often suspicious of women’s mystery rites, and may have circulated legends about them like those cited by Juvenal about the rites of the Bona Dea, another goddess worshipped in secret exclusively by Roman women. According to this 1st century BCE Roman author, men imagined the rites to be of a sexual nature, with feasting, dancing and wild orgies (Juvenal 6.314, cited in Bernstein, 2000:220). It is important to remember that this is a male fantasy of secret women’s rites, rather than a description of their actual content, and that Juvenal was writing about the rites of the Bona Dea and not those of Diana. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that similar kinds of stories circulated about many women’s mysteries, including the rites of Diana. The motif of rites of sexual pleasure may thus have become associated with the legend of Diana and her followers. This motif surfaces again centuries later in association with the witches" sabbat.

Christian legends of Herodias, the flying dancer, may have begun to merge with those of the pagan goddess Diana because of their shared theme of night flight. With the merging of the two traditions, additional motifs become part of the legend complex: a connection with the moon; the practice of witchcraft; the presence of additional spirits, i.e. the spirits of the unquiet dead from Hecate’s rade; and gatherings of women that included feasting, dancing, and sexual license. By the 10th century CE, legends of Diana and Herodias were in wide circulation in Europe, and this continued well into the 12th century. At this point, the legends began to incorporate material from yet another legend complex.

THE FAIRIES

During the 12th century, authors begin to report folk legends about spiritual beings, variously called bonae res (“good things”), dominae nocturnae (“night women”) or fatae (“fairies”), that would visit homes at night to feast. If food was plentiful and the house was in good order, these visits were thought to bring good luck, since the bonae res would restore everything they consumed before the night was out. The bonae res could also punish householders whose homes were not orderly, or who did not have plenty to eat and drink, by withdrawing their blessing. The spirits were sometimes said to be led by a queen who had different names, depending on the source of the legend: Bensoria, Diana or Herodiana (combining Herodias and Diana) in Italy; Satia and Dame Abonde in France; Holde or Berchta in what is now Germany (Bonomo, 1959:22) These female figures were the protectors of spinners and of orderly homes, distributors of fertility and plenty who rewarded the good and punished the lazy. Diana and Herodias became identified, in parts of Europe, as leaders of these spiritual assemblies (Bonomo, 1959:29).

In 1249, William of Alverina, Bishop of Paris, discussed beliefs in night rides by the followers of “Domina Abundia,” who brings abundance and good luck to the homes she visits if there is plenty to eat, but whose followers abandon and scorn houses where they receive no hospitality (Bonomo, 1959:22). Vincent of Beauvais (1190-1264) reports an instance of ostension involving this legend: a group of young men forced their way into the home of a rich farmer, helping themselves to whatever was lying around while dancing and singing “unem premes, cent en rendes” (“we take one, return a hundredfold”). The thieves ransacked the place while the credulous farmer told his wife to keep quiet, for the visitors were bonae res and would increase their riches a hundredfold (Bonomo, 1959:25-26).

A similar story appears in Boccaccio’s Decameron (1348-54) as the “Queen’s Tale” (#9). Two common laborers, Bruno and Buffalmacco, explain to a learned doctor that despite their poverty, they are able to live happily, because they go in corso (“on course,” “on a journey”). “From this we draw anything we want or need, without any harm to others, and from this comes our happy lifestyle which you see,” explains Bruno. The doctor wants to know what this is all about, but Bruno tells him it is a great secret, and that he could never reveal it. The doctor swears he won"t tell a soul, so at last Bruno confides the details to him. He and Buffalmacco are part of a brigade of 25 men with a captain and two council members elected every six months, guided by two disciples of a great necromancer. Twice a month, the brigade assembles; each person states their wishes and all are provided for. The assembly then feasts on delicious food and fine wine, while sweet music plays and beautiful women are available for erotic fun. The doctor can"t wait to go “in corso” himself, and begins to ply the laborers with gifts and money, hoping they will take him. Finally they agree. They tell him that on an appointed night, a dark, hairy beast will appear and carry him to a secret location, but he must not mention God or the saints. On the designated night, Buffalmacco and Bruno appear dressed in a bear-skin and carry the gullible doctor on their backs, leaping and yelping, until they dump him into a sewage ditch while they escape, laughing at his foolishness.

Legends about fairies who reward neatness and plenty and punish want and slovenliness seem to address issues of class conflict and social inequality in pre-modern Europe. One family’s good fortune could be explained as the result of supernatural intervention. At the same time, such legends also gave hope to the lower classes that if they keep a neat enough house, they too might be blessed by the bonae res. In this sense, the stories acted as a form of social control, reinforcing values of orderliness and hospitality while threatening sanction against householders who violated them. The stories also contained compensatory fantasies for the lower classes, a theme that will appear again a few centuries later. For people whose very survival depended on subsistence farming, and who often suffered from hunger and privation, the idea of breaking into the homes of the wealthy and enjoying some of their benefits, even in spirit, must have been a compelling one indeed, especially as the food magically restored itself by morning. It is not surprising that instances of ostension like the one described by Vincent of Beauvais occurred.

These versions also demonstrate that legends about night-time travels in the company of spirits had both believers and skeptics. Moreover, there may have been class differences between the two: lower classes were more likely to know about them and believe in them than the educated classes, for reasons I explained above. In Boccaccio’s tale, the learned doctor, who has never heard of the legend, is taken advantage of by shrewd laborers, who themselves are non-believers, although they are familiar with the legend. They successfully fool and humiliate the learned doctor, reversing the usual power relationships between social classes. However, nowhere in Boccaccio’s version is there mention of a company of women, or of a female leader of the spiritual assembly; instead the company is led by a great necromancer, and the doctor is told he will be borne to the assembly by a hairy beast, perhaps a reference to the diabolization of these legends that was taking place during Boccaccio’s lifetime.

In all accounts discussed so far, the point of view of the Canon Episcopi prevails: the night travels are spiritual journeys; they do not take place in the flesh. The stupidity of the gullible is exactly that they mistake a spiritual tradition for an actual practice. Moreover, while the clerics decried belief in these legends because they diverted parishioners" attention away from God, they were not taken as evidence of the practice of witchcraft, nor did they have any diabolical content. But as the 12th century advanced, a new view began to emerge and compete with that of the Canon. According to this emergent worldview, the women’s nightly journeys were not spiritual, but real. At the same time, older legends about the Society of Diana and Herodias, the bonae res and Dame Abonde begin to merge with tales about maleficent witches. These legends took on a menacing tone. Combined with new attitudes about the nature of the night journeys, they became the building blocks of the witches" sabbat in the subversion myth of diabolical witchcraft.

FAIRIES, HEALING AND SECRET SOCIETIES

Until the 11th century, legends of the society of Diana or Herodias existed side by side with legends about a very different kind of character: women who entered homes at night in sprit form to harm the inhabitants by sucking blood, eating bodies and cooking them before restoring to them the appearance of life. Their victims eventually became ill and died. These are related to the Classical Roman legends of striae, women who could transform into birds of prey to fly out at night and eat their victims, often infants, in their beds (Bonomo, 1959:33). Their victims often appeared perfectly healthy, but over a period of time sickened and died: their souls were thought to have been eaten and, in some cases, cooked by the maleficent beings.

In some parts of Sicily, Sardinia, and Friuli, these two strains still existed separately as recently as the 19th century. In Sardinian folklore, cogas (lit. “cooks;” vampire-like witches) and janas (fairies; from dianas, “followers of Diana;” cf. Neapolitan ianare) are very different types of creatures: while cogas are uniformly malevolent, janas live in caves or Neolithic shaft tombs in the mountains, are expert weavers and singers, and can interact with and even marry humans (Liori, 1992:107- 111). The 19th century country doctor and folklore collector Giuseppe Pitré reported that Sicilian peasants distinguished between the vampiric, maleficent witch (stria, nserra) and the donna di fuori. Sicilian donne di fuori (“women from the outside”) or belle signore (“beautiful ladies”) documented by Pitré are creatures somewhere between fairies and witches. They appear as beautiful women who can enter homes at night through the keyhole. If all is in order, they reward the householders, but they punish dirt and disorder. They love babies, but too much attention from the donne di fuori can also harm children (Pitré, 1889: iv:153). Gustav Henningsen, in his careful review of Spanish Inquisition documents from Sicily, reveals that during the 16th century, the term “donne di fuori” referred to both fairies and people of both genders who were believed to ride out with them at night (Henningsen 1993:195). These individuals were usually folk healers who could cure illnesses caused by the fairies, often as a result of some unwitting offense against them (Henningsen, 1993:195). The usual cure involved a ritual supper offered to the fairies by the victim. The fairies, accompanied by the healers in spirit form, would come to the victim’s home on an appointed night where they would dance, celebrate and spiritually consume the food, thus curing the afflicted person (Henningsen, 1993:200-01).

These medieval Sicilian beliefs have interesting parallels throughout the modern Mediterranean. In rural Greece, as recently as the 1960’s, certain folk healers specialized in curing ills brought about by the fairies, known as exotica (“those from outside;” cf. donne di fuori) (Henningsen, 1993:210). Anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano, working in Morocco in the 1960’s, documented a belief system centered around the jinn (fairies) and their human followers, folk healers belonging to religious brotherhoods who could cure illness by performing a trance-dance to special music. The queen of the jinn, known as ëA"isha Qandisha, could appear either as a beautiful woman or a hideous hag, but always had a non-human feature, such as camel toes. Healers consulted ëA"isha Qandisha in their dreams, where she explained the cause of the illness and its cure (Crapanzano, 1975:147). In the 1970’s, folklorist Gail Kligman documented Romanian brotherhoods of trance dancers who specialized in curing ailments thought to be caused by iele (fairies), whose patron saint was Diana or Irodeasa [cf. Erodiade] (Kligman, 1981). And in Sardinia in the 1980’s, folklorist Clara Gallini studied argismo, a belief system based on the idea that the (often metaphorical) bite of certain insects could be cured only through ecstatic dancing, done to music played by groups of specialized musician-healers (Gallini, 1988). There may also be parallels to tarantismo, the folk belief system documented in southern Italy, especially Calabria, by folklorist Ernesto De Martino (1961); but this is a topic beyond the scope of this paper.

The broad diffusion of similar motifs in the circum-Mediterranean suggests that we are dealing with a belief-system of significant antiquity which may once have existed in many parts of Europe. It involved beliefs about illnesses caused by fairies or spirits, folk healers who specialized in communicating with these spirits through dreams and trances, and the enactment of ritual cures, which may have included special meals, music and trance-dancing. In many cases, healers themselves belonged to a society which may have met either in spirit or in actual ritual enactments of the cures.

THE DIABOLIZATION OF A LEGEND COMPLEX

But in most of Europe, belief systems involving night-time spiritual journeys, folk healers and fairies began to change during the 12th century, merging with motifs about maleficent witches and with the growing diabolical interpretation of witchcraft generated by the Church. John of Salisbury (1110-1180) combines the two by attributing to Herodias the leadership of night-time cannibalistic banquets, where babies were offered to the lamiae, female-headed serpents of Classical provenance. By the 14th century in Italy, Jacopo Passavanti first mentions the tregenda (sabbat) in conjunction with his merging of the two legendary strains. In his description, demons take the place of humans at these gatherings, leaving humans asleep in their beds. The intent of the demons is diabolical: to lead people astray. He mentions that certain women believe they travel with this company, and that its leaders are Herodias and Diana (Bonomo, 1959:64).

An examination of some Italian trial records shows the gradual transformation of legends about the society of Herodias/ Diana into diabolical sabbats, where feasting, drinking and dancing are accompanied by sex acts and cannibalism. Two early trials which have captured a great deal of scholarly attention are those of Sibillia and Pierina of Milan (Bonomo, 1959; Caro Baroja, 1961; Muraro Vaiani, 1976; Ginzburg, 1989). Both trials took place in the late 14th century; both women were probably first identified and persecuted because they practiced divination or folk healing (Muraro Vaiani, 1976:153). Sibillia’s first trial took place in 1384. Accused of heresy, Sibillia confessed to having believed in and told legends about the games of Signora Oriente (“milady of the East”), not thinking it was a sin. Signora Oriente or La Signora del Giuoco (“the lady of the game”) presided over these gatherings, where there was feasting on all manner of delicacies, music and dancing; she could predict the future, reveal secrets and resurrect the animals that had been eaten by the assembly, so that in the morning, all appeared exactly as before.

In 1390, Pierina de Bugatis, also of Milan, confessed under questioning to participating in the “game of Erodiade.” The gatherings would slaughter and feast on livestock, whose bones Signora Oriente would put back into their skins before resurrecting them with her magic wand. The party would visit the homes of the wealthy, where they would eat and drink; they would bless homes that were neat and clean. Signora Oriente instructed her followers about the properties of various herbs and answered their questions about illness and thefts. But the followers were sworn to secrecy. To attend the assembly, Pierina would call upon a spirit named “Lucifelus,” who appeared in the form of a man to take her there.

The tales told by Sibillia and Pierina illustrate the merging of a number of motifs from different traditions into a single legend complex: the night journeys, the company of women led by a female leader, who seems to control both abundance and rebirth, as well as revealing the future and dispensing advice on healing; the magical feasting in which appetites are satisfied; the resurrection of dead animals after the banquet; the fairy visits to the homes of the rich, where hospitality is rewarded and all returns as before at the evening’s conclusion. In Pierina’s version, we have the first appearance of “Lucifelus,” a variant of Lucifero, or Lucifer, as the agent of transport to the games—a minor figure, at this point, who is diabolical in name only.

Italian historian Luisa Muraro Vaiani believes the judges hearing these depositions had a hard time understanding their nature. The women at times spoke as though they were reporting folklore, while at other times they spoke as though they themselves had experienced these night journeys—a characteristic of legend performance I have already remarked upon, and one which makes sense if we accept the hypothesis that both women were folk healers who continued an ancient tradition of consulting with spiritual beings for healing advice. Their tales were dreamlike, mixing familiar elements with supernatural ones. To us, they may even suggest events that took place in an altered state of consciousness, and like many such experiences, they alternate in perspective between the self and a kind of detachment from the self. But the judges, working with a binary system of opposites in which illusion and reality were mutually exclusive concepts, didn"t know what to make of these dream-like visions that seemed so real to the accused. They ended up assuming they were real. Sibillia was sentenced to prison at her first trial for having believed in and told people about the society of Diana, acts that were considered apostasy, not witchcraft. But at her second trial in 1390, she was sentenced to death for recidivism and for having actually participated in the games. Thus, the transition between attitudes of the Canon and later ones hinged on the understanding of legendary material as fact (Muraro Vaiani, 1976:137-142)—a critical transition which had ominous consequences in the development of the witchcraft persecutions.

One of the best-known of the Italian witch trials took place two centuries after Sibillia and Pierina were tried and executed. In 1540, Bellezza Orsini of Colle Vecchio (Perugia), a widely respected folk healer who cured using herb-infused oils, was accused of poisoning. At first she swore her innocence, but under torture, she confessed to being part of a secret society of witches. The secret society she described was a hierar- chical one in which the initiate-to-be apprenticed with a master strega. Initiation involved a formal renunciation of Church teachings, a renegation of baptism, and the invocation of the devil, who was called Mauometto (“Mohammed”), and appeared as a handsome man dressed in black. At the time of Bellezza’s trial, the Islamic Ottoman empire was expanding its reach towards Europe. The use of the name “Mohammed” for the devil reflects widespread popular fear and prejudice towards Muslims in16th century Europe. Sexual intercourse with the devil was part of the initiation. Afterwards, the assembled company would fly off, with the help of flying ointment, to the magic walnut tree of Benevento where they would dance with other devils. Initiates chose new, non-Christian names so they could be used when members got together again. Orsini described witches as organized into teams according to their place of origin. Each team was led by a captain with 20-30 students under her. A “witch queen,” called Befania, ruled over all the teams. Each November 1, there was a “reconciliation,” or gathering of witches, during which a new witch queen would be elected. According to Orsini, the members of the witch society were sworn to help one another, and to help less fortunate teams by sharing baby-meatballs and other ingredients. By then, witch gatherings included cannibalistic feasting, and the dead were no longer brought back to life.

It is evident that drastic changes had taken place in the Diana/Herodias legend complex between 1390 and 1540. Gone are the earlier legends of all-female societies of revelers whose presence brought good luck to the homes they visited, and where all that was consumed was magically restored—a kind of compensatory fantasy for the poor not unlike other contemporary portrayals of utopias of plenty, such as Cuccagna and Bengodi (Del Giudice, 2001). By 1540, Herodias and Diana are no longer players in the dangerous “game.” Instead, it has acquired menacing, diabolical elements introduced by ecclesiastical revisions which interpreted all deviations from Christian doctrine as evidence of a world-wide diabolical conspiracy whose agents were witches. The witch gathering is now presided over by the devil, whose name is identical to that of the Islamic prophet Mohammed—evidence of the demonization of Islam in the popular imagination by the 16th century. Besides the devils" followers, the women present include the witch-queen Befania, a corruption of the word epifania (“epiphany”), and witches who initiate their charges into the diabolical society. According to Cattabiani, there may well be a connection between Befana, the Italian Christmas witch, and earlier legends of Herodias. This link is preserved in the names for the Befana in the region of the Italian Alps near Belluno, where to this day she is known as “Redodesa,” “Redosa,” or “Redosola"—possible corruptions of "Erodiade” (cf. Romanian “Irodeasa”) (Cattabiani, 1994:13). The witches gather at Benevento and fly around the magical walnut tree with the help of flying ointment; cannibalism and sexual intercourse with the devil are integral features of their assemblies. The witch society is a secret society; initiates are brought in by a teacher, and secret names are used to conceal everyday identity. November 1 is now a recognized time for witches" gatherings. Bellezza Orsini’s confession reveals the growing diabolization of the legend of the night journeys, as well as the crystallization of certain folk motifs which continue to be central in contemporary revival Witchcraft: secrecy, the use of ritual names, initiation through a teacher, and the importance of October 31/ November 1 in the year cycle. The transition in the content of the legends was accompanied by a change in the attitudes of the clerics and the elite: material previously understood as legendary was now being understood as fact. The tension between belief and disbelief that had kept the legends circulating was beginning to solidify into an acceptance of the witches" sabbat as an actual event. By 1525, the Canon Episcopi was being called into question: Paolo Grillando writes in De sortilegiis eorumque poenas that the Canon was mistaken about the illusory nature of the witches" sabbats, and that they were in fact real (Bonomo, 1959:110).

BETWEEN DREAM AND REALITY

But what if the judges were right? If the games of Diana/ Herodias were in fact experiences of the imagination, whether dreams or other alternate states of consciousness, why did many women confess to having attended them? Is it possible that the Society of Diana/ Herodias was a real secret society of women, and that Sibillia, Pierina and Bellezza were members? Could Herodias/ Erodiade/ Aradia have been the secret name of an actual leader of such a society, who then became legendary? If this were true, it would give us an intriguing source for Leland’s legend of Aradia, as well as revolutionizing our understanding of the history of the witch trials and our sense of gender relations in Europe during the middle ages. Let us carefully examine the evidence both for and against this hypothesis. First, it is important to remember that not all women confessed to the reality of their experiences; many maintained their dream-like nature to the bitter end. Other confessions, like Bellezza’s, were produced under torture, and are thus unreliable as historical evidence. Victims would often confess to outrageous acts under torture because the narration of fantastic episodes brought respite from agony and bought the accused time. A strange compact often developed between judges and their victims which may have led some women to manufacture diabolical details they thought would satisfy their accusers, leading to the creation of fantastic trivia such as the baby meatballs in Bellezza’s confession. Other details might have been drawn from the victim’s knowledge of everyday reality; for example, the complex organization of the witch society described by Bellezza parallels the organization of other medieval social institutions such as trade guilds and religious fraternities and sororities, which were led by elected officials chosen at yearly assemblies. These guilds and fraternities functioned as mutual aid societies, much as Bellezza describes for the secret society of witches. Thus we need to be selective in interpreting the nature of these narratives. Some details suggest that certain aspects of the Society of Diana/ Herodias may have been real. The women who reported on it constituted only a small minority of all those accused of witchcraft. Moreover, the narrators had an important element in common: they were folk healers and diviners. A key function of the night-time journeys was the obtaining of answers to divinatory questions and information on cures. This structure parallels that of similar belief-complexes about spirits, healers and night journeys from the circum- Mediterranean. In several of these examples, we know that folk healers indeed were members of a society that convened in the flesh to play music, dance ecstatically and conduct healing rites. In other cases, the societies reported by healers existed only in spirit, and included spiritual members, whether fairies, jinn, exotica or iele. These details, shared with other circum- Mediterranean healing traditions, suggest that the accused may indeed have been part of a secret society of folk healers—either actual, spiritual, or both.

At the same time, other legend elements have content that is clearly dream-like and fantastic: all wishes are granted; food magically regenerates; humans fly. These motifs point to the spiritual nature of at least some of the experiences. Additional elements suggest the creation of a legendary peasant utopia: there is food and drink aplenty for all assembled; humans and nature exist in harmony; death is followed by resurrection or rebirth; relationships, though hierarchical, are based on mutual trust and dignity; knowledge is available to all members; gratification is ubiquitous, and the Christian notion of earthly pleasures as sinful is completely absent. These descriptions suggest a kind of utopia, an “imagined state” whose conditions inversely reflect those of its source (Del Giudice and Porter, 2001:4-5). Muraro Vaiani suggests that Diana/ Herodias was to her followers as Christ was to his, albeit in a parallel universe: the Lady did not judge or deny the Christian universe, but offered an alternative (Muraro Vaiani, 1976:153). Legends of the secret society may have constituted a kind of compensatory fantasy for women— one in which women had power and the ultimate authority rested with a benevolent supernatural female leader. Through legends and perhaps even dreams, they may have offered solace and compensation to women whose real-life experiences reflected the hardships of gender and class oppression in medieval Europe, much as narratives of earthly paradises such as Cuccagna and Bengodi, where rivers flowed with wine and mountains were made of cheese, were created by Italian peasants whose everyday lives were filled with hunger and privation (Del Giudice, 2001:12).

How can we better understand the nature of these narratives, which even after six centuries seem to take place in a world between dream and reality? I would suggest that it is not unreasonable to assume the existence in medieval Italy of legend complexes similar to those in other parts of the circum-Mediterranean, concerning fairies, spiritual journeys and healing. As we have already seen, aspects of these belief systems existed in parts of Europe and North Africa until the end of the 20th century. Henningsen’s work confirms the existence of similar beliefs in Sicily during the 16th century, and Behringer documents their presence in the western Alps. If Sibillia, Pierina and Bellezza were indeed members of such a society, their stories begin to make a certain amount of sense. This is especially true if we consider two additional tentative assumptions: the idea of ostension and that of the autonomous imagination. Ostension is Degh and Vazonyi’s term for the enactment of legends. For example, a Halloween haunted house may portray legends about ghosts, vampires and werewolves, or a Pagan ritual may dramatize the legend of Robin Hood. Ostension always derives from a pre-existing legend: the legend precedes the existence of its enactment. Thus, for instance, legends of contaminated Halloween candy predated the finding of actual contaminants in treats by at least ten years (Degh and Vazsonyi, 1986/1995). Individuals who placed needles, razor blades and other dangerous objects in treats as pranks engaged in a form of ostension. The theory of ostension explains how easily certain elements can pass from legend to ritualized action. Hypothetically, legends about spiritual journeys to dance with the fairies and receive healing can easily be transformed by creative individuals into healing rituals with food offerings to the fairies and ecstatic dancing to special music. What if some women, inspired by utopian legends of the Society of Diana/ Herodias, decided to try to replicate such a society in medieval Europe? Though we have no proof such a society ever existed, it is not inconceivable that a few inspired individuals might have decided to dramatize, once or repeatedly, the gatherings described in legends. The use of the term giuoco (“game”) by Sibillia and Pierina suggests the playful, prankish character of ostension. A “game” based on legends of Diana/ Herodias and the fairies would probably have been secret and limited to the friends and associates of the creative instigators, who might well have been folk healers. One or more women might even have played the role of Diana or Herodias, presiding over the gathering and giving advice. Feasting, drinking and dancing might have taken place, and the women may have exchanged advice on matters of healing and divination. The “game” might even have had a healing intent, as was the case for many comparable circum- Mediterranean rituals, and may have involved trance-dancing. This is one possible explanation for the remarkably consistent reports of Sibillia and Pierina, tried within a few years of each other. The existence of ostension in connection to these legends could also mean that Grimassi’s claim that Aradia was a real person may, in fact, not be entirely out of the question; a healer who was part of the society might have chosen to play the part of, or even take on the name of, Erodiade.

However, it is important to remember that even if a group decided to enact aspects of the legend of Diana/ Herodias, it would not have been a revival of pre-Christian paganism, but an attempt to act out certain ritual aspects described in the legends. Moreover, the more magical aspects from the trial reports—night flights on the backs of animals, ever-replenishing banquets, resurrection of dead livestock—could not have been achieved through ostension. We need to consider these as fantastical legend motifs, reports of experiences from trances or dreams, or both.

One way to explain these motifs is to consider the role of the autonomous imagination in blending cultural and personal material. This term, coined by anthropologist Michele Stephen, refers to a part of the human imagination that operates without our conscious control (Stephen, 1989:55- 61). It emerges in dreams and in alternate states of consciousness such as vision trances and religious ecstasy. The visions it produces are vivid and detailed, appearing “more real than reality” to experiencers. They seem to arise independently of any conscious volition on the part of the subject. The autonomous imagination is more creative and synthetic than ordinary thought processes, easily combining elements from the subject’s personal life with cultural and religious material. Thus dreams and visions seem to speak directly to our most intimate concerns, but also bring religious and cultural symbols to bear upon them. Furthermore, the autonomous imagination processes time and memory differently from ordinary conscious thought. Past, present and future events may blend together; personal memories may combine with cultural material in unusual ways.

It is possible that some of the experiences of the Society of Diana/ Herodias described by the accused are attributable to the autonomous imagination of the experiencers. Please note that I am not claiming that the accusers invented the experiences; in fact, I am saying quite the opposite. To women such as Pierina and Sibillia, the experience of flying out to the games of Herodias may have seemed more real than ordinary, everyday reality if it took place in trance visions. While it is possible that vision trances may have played a part in a hypothetical, ostensive Society of Diana/ Herodias, it is also conceivable that women who were active narrators of these legends as well as folk healers might have experienced altered states of consciousness, either through the use of herbs or by using meditative techniques. This is consistent with the discoveries of Behringer, who studied the trial transcripts of Conrad Stoeckhlin, a 16th century horse herder from Oberstdorf, in the western Alps, who was executed for practicing witchcraft. Stoeckhlin, a folk healer, reported that an angel led him on a series of trance journeys and gave him advice on healing and divination (Behringer, 1998:17-21; 138). We also know that some contemporary Italian folk healers used such techniques well into the 20th century, and that they reported contacting spirits who helped them with their healing (Henningsen, 1993; De Martino, 1961, 1966; Selis, 1978; DiNola, 1993:41).

Of course, spiritual experiences (and their interpretations) vary widely according to culture and historical period. It is not unlikely that contemporary legend material about Diana, Herodias and the fairies may have made its way into the trance visions of medieval Italian folk healers through the mechanism of the autonomous imagination, giving rise to their reports of actually participating in the game of Herodias. The healers were telling the truth; their experiences were real. Both Behringer, in his research on the visionary horse herder Stoeckhlin, and Stuart Clark, in his monumental study of early European demonology, propose early modern European folk culture did not always distinguish sharply between experiences that took place in dreams, ecstatic visions or trances and reality (Behringer, 1998:158-59; Clark, 1997:193-96). The dualistic conception in which “dreamtime” was opposed to “reality” was a product of medieval Church reforms that culminated in the formation of the myth of diabolical witchcraft. Here we must return to Muraro Vaiani’s hypothesis that it was the judges who did not know how to understand the ecstatic experiences of the accused because they fell outside of their dualistic conception of the nature of reality. Therefore, they interpreted them as sorcery—the only mechanism they understood through which illusion could be made to seem real.

CONCLUSIONS

What can we conclude from this evidence about the legend of Aradia? The evidence I have examined and presented here suggests that the legend of Aradia has roots in archaic, pre-Christian materials concerning societies of healers who trafficked with spirits in order to cure. Healing may have involved trance-journeys as well as ecstatic dancing. These ancient materials combined with Classical legends of Diana and Hecate, and during the middle ages became attached to the New Testament story of Herodias, the eternal dancer. By the 11th century, these elements had become part of a widespread legend complex in Europe that may have involved episodes of ostension, or the enactment of certain legend motifs, probably for the purposes of healing. As clerical and popular attitudes towards the nature of nighttime spiritual journeys changed, these legends merged with parallel folk materials about maleficent witches, and became the building blocks of the subversion myth of the diabolical sabbat, responsible for the death of tens of thousands of innocent women and men between 1300 and 1750.

What Leland collected from Maddalena may represent a 19th century version of this legend that incorporated later materials influenced by medieval diabolism: the presence of “Lucifero,” the Christian devil; the practice of sorcery; the naked dances under the full moon. While there may have been instances of ostension regarding this legend, the evidence does not support the idea that Aradia was an early teacher of the Craft, although some women may have called themselves Erodiade during ostensive episodes. There is no evidence of a widespread revival of pre-Christian religion as a result of the proliferation of this legend. In fact, it is ironic that a compensatory legend that envisioned a society led by women, featuring relationships based on equality, access to knowledge for all, and the fulfillment of all earthly desires became twisted into the subversion myth of the diabolical sabbat, which was responsible for the murder of so many innocent women during the witch craze.

Legends and beliefs about healing, fairies and nighttime spiritual journeys may have continued to exist in pockets throughout Italy until the late 20th century. Because legends always change to reflect their social environment, they became Christianized, and incorporated references to saints. In some cases, saints may have replaced the earlier fairies. Some version of this legend complex may be at the core of both Leland’s discovery of a “witch cult” in Tuscany in the late 1800’s, and Grimassi’s claims that his family practiced a form of folk healing that involved spirits, dancing, and the goddess Diana (Grimassi, pers. communication 8/25/00). These were not, as Leland suggested, survivals of Etruscan religion, but elements of great antiquity reworked into systems that made sense for Italian peasants of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Some parts of these belief systems may even have survived the journey to America, forming the basis of Stregheria, or Italian American revival Witchcraft.

Folklore, of course, seldom dies; it transforms itself according to new paradigms and cultural discourses. So it is not surprising to read new versions of this legend emerging today. Grimassi’s expansion of Leland’s materials must be understood in exactly such a context—as the continuation of the legend begun so long ago. It is intriguing to note that while both Leland’s and Grimassi’s versions may appear to be strictly Neo- Pagan in content, both also contain very strong Christian influences. In the Gospel of the Witches, Diana sends her only daughter Aradia to earth to teach people to resist their oppressors just as in the New Testament, God sends his son Jesus to earth for much the same purpose. In Hereditary Witchcraft, Grimassi describes Aradia as having twelve disciples—six male-female couples—who help spread her teachings after her mysterious disappearance. Do these elements invalidate the legends? Quite the contrary, I would argue. They simply demonstrate how easily legend material absorbs motifs from the surrounding culture. These elaborated new versions show that the legend of Aradia is a living tradition that continues to evolve today, changing to adapt to the individual needs of the narrator as well as the larger changes in society.

REFERENCES CITED

Baldassare, Silvio. 1997. Review of R. Grimassi, Ways of the Strega. In Songs of the Dayshift Foreman: Journal of a Rainforest Witch 69: 12-16.

Behringer, Wolfgang. 1998. Shaman of Oberstdorf. Translated by H.C. Erik Midelfort. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Bernstein, Frances. 2000. Classical Living. San Francisco: Harper.

Bonomo, Giuseppe. 1959. Caccia alle streghe. Palermo: Palumbo.

Caro Baroja, Julio. 1961. The World of the Witches. Translated by O.N.V. Glendinning.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cattabiani, Alfredo. 1994. Lunario. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori.

Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with Demons: the Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Clifton, Chas S. 1998. “The Significance of Aradia.” In Aradia, of the Gospel of the Witches, by Charles G. Leland, translated by Mario Pazzaglini and Dina Pazzaglini, 59- 80. Blaine, WA: Phoenix Publishing.

Crapanzano, Vincent. 1975. “Saints, Jnun, and Dreams: an Essay in Moroccan Ethnopsychology.” Psychiatry 38:145-159.

Degh, Linda and Andrew Vazsonyi. 1976. “Legend and Belief.” In Folklore Genres, ed. by Dan Ben Amos, 93-124. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

_____. 1995 [1986]. “Does the Word “Dog” Bite? Ostensive Action: a Means of Legend Telling.” In Narratives in Society: a Performer-Centered Study of Narration, 236- 262. Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Sciences. (Reprinted from Journal of Folklore Research, Fall 1983)

Del Giudice, Luisa. 2001. “Mountains of Cheese, Rivers of Wine: Paesi di Cuccagna and Other Gastronomic Utopias.” In Imagined States: Nationalism, Utopia and Longing in Oral Cultures, ed. Luisa Del Giudice and Gerald Porter, 11-63. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

_____ and Gerald Porter. 2001. “Introduction.” In Imagined States: Nationalism, Utopia and Longing in Oral Cultures, ed. Luisa Del Giudice and Gerald Porter, 1-10. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

De Martino, Ernesto. 1987 [1966] Sud e magia. Milano: Feltrinelli. _____. 1961. La terra del rimorso. Milano: Feltrinelli.

Di Nola, Alfonso. 1993. Lo specchio e l’olio: le superstizioni italiane. Bari: Laterza.

Dundes, Alan. 1971. “On the Psychology of Legend.” In American Folk Legend: a Symposium, ed. by Wayland Hand, 21-36. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gallini, Clara. 1988. La ballerina variopinta. Naples: Liguori.

Ginzburg, Carlo. 1989. Storia notturna: una decifrazione del sabba. Tornio: Einaudi. _____. 1993.. “Deciphering the Sabbath.” In European Witchcraft: Centers and Peripheries. ed. by Gustav Hennigsen and Bengt Ankarloo, 121-137. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Grimassi, Raven. 1999. Hereditary Witchcraft. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Press.

_____. 1995. Ways of the Strega. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Press.

Henningsen, Gustav. 1993. “"The Ladies from Outside”: An Archaic Pattern of the Witches" Sabbath.“ In European Witchcraft: Centers and Peripheries. ed. by Gustav Henningsen and Bengt Ankarloo,191-215. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kelly, Aidan. 1992. The Gospel of Diana. Privately published manuscript on disk.

Kilgman, Gail. 1981. Calus: Symbolic Transformation in Romanian Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Leland, Charles G. 1899, 1990. Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. Blaine, WA: Phoenix Publishing [reprint of original edition].

Liori, Antonangelo. 1992. Demoni, miti e riti magici della Sardegna. Rome: Newton Compton.

Magliocco, Sabina. 1993. "Eels, Bananas and Cucumbers: a Sexual Legend and Changing Women’s Values in Rural Sardinia.” Fabula 34-½, 66-77.

Muraro Vaiani, Luisa. 1976. La signora del gioco: episodi della caccia alle streghe. Milano: Feltrinelli.

Pitré, Giuseppe. 1889. Usi, costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano. Palermo: Giuffé.

Selis, Luisa. 1978. “Prime ricerche sulla presenza delle streghe in Sardegna oggi.” In L"erba delle donne: maghe, streghe, guaritrici. Roma: Roberto Napoleone Editore, 137-147.

Stephen, Michele. 1989. “Self, the Sacred Other and Autonomous Imagination.” In The Religious Imagination in New Guinea. ed. Michele Stephen and Gilbert Herdt, 41-64. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Sabina Magliocco is Associate Professor of Anthropology at California State University - Northridge. She has done fieldwork in Sardinia (Italy) as well as among contemporary Pagans in the San Francisco Bay area, and is the author of a forthcoming book Neopagan Sacred Art and Altars: Making Things Whole (University Press of Mississippi) and a number of articles. She is a Gardnerian initiate.

www.AradiaGoddess.com

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langwrites · 7 years ago

Note

ABC questions for each character of the letter their name starts with

So this is a long one.

A: Aptitude

Grand Duke Arno Lambert, who has basically reinvented himself to be Lumina’s Duke Consort, really.

1. what are your oc’s natural abilities, things they’ve been doing since young?

Arno is a born healer. As a Trugiln, he’s always been a decent tracker, guide, and hunter when necessary, but his preference is always to care for the people and animals who stumble their way to his home. He’s also pretty good at math.

2. what activities have they participated in?

Arno, back when he was under a different name, used to be a champ at drunken arm wrestling because he was chronically sober.

3. what abilities do they have that they’ve worked for?

Herbalism, rather than healing, was something he had to learn. He also practiced with throwing axes and hammers as melee weapons back in the day, to mixed success.

4. what things are they bad at?

I never said he was any good at throwing weapon. Only that he tried to use them.

5. what is their most impressive talent?

Arno can heal with enough skill—and a touch of divine providence—to revive the recently-dead.

B: Basics

Here we have Brigid Rime, a villain!

1. what is their hair color?

Her hair is white, which she dyes different colors when the mood strikes her. It’s been a very lovely nigh-prismatic purple before.

2. what is their eye color?

Deep brown. There’s something a bit odd about the way her eyes appear in bright light, though… (Her pupils are actually square.)

3. how tall are they?

About 5’4”.

4. how old are they?

Somewhere between 25 and 32.

5. how much do they weigh?

137 lbs.

C: Comfort

Cirrus, Gabilan’s master-at-arms.

1. how do they sit in a chair?

He prefers to sit in a chair the way chairs are meant to be sat in, and gets a little annoyed with everyone else deciding that “furniture” is the same as “climbing wall.”

2. in what position do they sleep?

Cirrus sleeps on his side or back, occasionally rolling from one to the other and landing squarely on the floor.

3. what is their ideal comfort day?

Cirrus would definitely prefer to spend the day in three major sections: sparring with everyone in Gabilan, then visiting a steam house to relax after a workout, and finally reading a good book late into the night.

4. what is their major comfort food? Why?

Jellied eel, because his mother used to make it. It doesn’t actually taste appealing.

5. who is the best at comforting them when down?

Cirrus prefers to visit the stables and check in with the horses, because he feels more relaxed around them than around his brothers sometimes. Of said horses, his favorite is named Silverstream.

D: Decoration

Dazma Kiltaea, master sorceress. Probably not human.

1. how would they decorate a house if they had one under their name?

Dazma has the correct total lack of taste to appreciate white marble columns in home decorating, in some 40-room manor that was impressive enough before cultural grave-robbing kicked in.

2. how would they decorate their child’s room?

Not her problem. She doesn’t have one of those anymore.

3. how do they decorate their own room?

Gold. So much gold. She wants to be a dragon of yore. She would also like an arcane workshop within easy reach to help with the obtaining of more things her real self missed out on. Also, she’s rather fond of floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

Light hitting the room is like as not to blind visitors.

4. what type of clothes and accessories do they wear?

Picture a woman-shaped swathe of white, blue, and black fabric. Anything past that point is a mystery.

5. do they like makeup/nail/beauty trends?

Trends are for people who care what other people think. Her nails are sharp enough to cut, exactly as she likes them.

E: External Personality

Evander of Oltose, not exactly Mr. Personality.

1. does the way they do things portray their internal personality?

No.

2. do they do things that conform to the norm?

He certainly seems like a model soldier. Obeys orders, never asks questions…

3. do they follow trends or do their own thing?

He kinda tends to go along with the crowd, whatever that might entail.

4. are they up-to-date on the internet fads?

The internet doesn’t exist.

5. do they portray their personality intentionally or let people figure it out on their own?

The latter. Less effort that way.

Interestingly, every thing said by or about him is almost guaranteed to be a lie. Evander’s original personality and identity was entirely overwritten by a creature from the Dreamscape years ago, whose central personality tenet is “Deceit.”

F: Fun

Fiamma of Kingsroad, the Red Shirt of the Royal Kaltekas Army, Magical Operations.

1. what do they do for fun?

Fiamma prefers to organize large parties with friends if at all possible. If not, she used to be the one who kept track of betting pools, card counters, and weighted dice.

2. what is their ideal party?

50+ attendees with free-flowing alcohol, games, and at least one fantastic musical performance. She wants to have a concert.

3. who would they have the most fun with?

She prefers hanging out with people like Zahara, rather than the party poopers of the world like Lumina.

4. can they have fun while conforming to rules?

Yes!

5. do they go out a lot?

Under better circumstances, yes!

G: Gorgeous

The Gumiho, also known as one of the walking, talking Dreamscape dangers.

1. what is their most attractive external feature?

Silky black hair seems to appeal!

2. what is the most attractive part of their personality?

The Gumiho can make any part of its personality attractive, from sense of humor to ambition to the urge to devour human flesh. It’s in its nature as a predatory trickster to adapt to anything that might convince prey to relax. Then come the teeth.

3. what benefits come with being their friend?

Not getting eaten.

4. what parts of them do they like and dislike?

Nothing of note.

5. what parts of others do they envy?

Nothing of note.

H: Heat

Hokide, Dreamscape born-and-raised. Which causes problems.

1. do they rather a hot or cold room?

Cold. Hot rooms have a bad relationship with Hokide’s lack of thermoregulation. His species has a much easier time in the wintry parts of the world.

2. do they prefer summer or winter?

Winter. So much.

3. do they like the snow?

Sort of?

4. do they have a favorite summer activity?

Does “not dying” count?

5. do they have a favorite winter activity?

Exploring glaciers to make maps and sketch landscapes. It’s fascinating!

I: In-the-closet

Ismene Nikos, Oceanus’s mother and healer extraordinaire for the Royal Kaltekas Army.

1. what is their sexuality?

Heteroflexible, I think.

2. have they ever questioned their sexuality?

Not especially. Ismene didn’t really think her early life gave her many opportunities to experiment much with her sexuality, and life in the army came to a pretty spectacularly horrible end. After the fallout, she decided none of it was worth the trouble.

3. have they ever questioned their gender?

After speaking with Fithrain and accidentally getting introduced to the concept, yes. After some thinking, Ismene shrugged and came to the conclusion she was a cis woman.

4. would/was their family be okay with them being LGBT?

She doesn’t think they would have been.

5. how long would/did it take for them to come out?

Closest she ever got was explaining to her son that he didn’t have be ashamed of being attracted to some of the village boys instead of just girls. Oceanus, being about seven at the time, never made the connection between his mother’s acceptance in that moment and anything past that.

K: Kill

Keyah, the head of scouting in Gabilan!

1. have they ever thought about suicide?

Yes.

2. have they ever thought about homicide?

Definitely. It’s a part of her job description as a former Army scout, though not exactly a recognized aspect of being a courier.

3. if they could kill anyone without punishment, would they? Who?

Probably people who threaten Gabilan, because she’s done it before.

4. who would miss them if they died?

Her friends in Gabilan, her extended family, and her boss.

5. who would be happy they died, anyone?

No one?

L: Lemons

Lucretia Araceli, would-be knight!

1. what is their favorite fruit?

Cherries.

2. what is their least favorite fruit?

Peaches.

3. are there any foods they hate?

Jellied eels.

4. do they have any food intolerances?

She can’t stand beans, but isn’t intolerant or allergic.

5. what is their favorite food?

Oltosian wheat bread.

M: Maternal

Mitra bint Naviyd ibn Copernicus al-Fulan, one of the people least suited for this.

1. would they want a daughter or a son?

If forced to address the question of children, she’d say one of both. Or neither.

2. how many children do they want?

None, generally speaking.

3. would they be a good parent?

Yes.

4. what would they name a son? what would they name a daughter?

“Omair” and “Fatimah.”

5. would they adopt?

Probably not.

N: Never Have I Ever

Nimbus, schoolmaster of Gabilan.

1. what would they never do?

Get married.

2. what have they never done that they want to do?

Climb to the tallest peak in the Spine and plant a flag there.

3. is there anything they absolutely can’t believe people do?

Read anything written by “S. Burat.”

4. what is the most embarrassing thing they’ve done?

Fell asleep on his desk, directly onto a still-wet document. Woke up with writing all over his face.

5. have they done anything they thought they’d never do?

Yeah: Live to see forty.

O: Optimism

Oceanus of Seabridge, one of our main protagonists.

1. are they optimistic or pessimistic?

Oceanus is deeply pessimistic.

2. are they openly optimistic, throwing it on others?

Nope. And nope.

3. are they good at giving advice?

Absolutely horrible. Most of his advice is phrased in a way that comes off as sarcastic or just blunt even when he’s trying to help.

4. is there anyone in their life that throws optimism on them?

Khalil and Alena both do, but Khalil is the more insistent one by far. Alena is a quieter presence.

5. were they always optimistic?

Fuck. No. And never have been.

P: Personality

Pyrrhos Razen, low-level tyrant.

1. what is their best personality trait?

He would say his business sense and pragmatism are the most useful to him and everyone around him. He’s proud of every moment he gets one over on someone else, and celebrates.

2. what is their worst personality trait?

Complete and utter disregard for human rights. The guy’s a mid-level crime lord, and what scruples he has don’t apply to anyone but himself and Brigid Rime, his partner in crime.

3. what of their personality do others love?

Brigid is most fond of his confidence. Others like the fact that when bought, he stays bought like a good mercenary. Or at least he honors deals made with him personally.

4. what of their personality do others envy?

Confidence, generally.

5. do they hate anything about their personality/about other’s personalities?

Pyrrhos despises indecisiveness and doesn’t understand the point of altruism. Which on its own means he doesn’t understand altruism in general.

Q: Questions

Quillyn, proprietor of the Evening Primrose in the Oltose town of Lysand.

1. do they ask for help?

Not really.

2. do they ask questions in class?

What’s “class?”

3. do they answer questions that make them a little uncomfortable?

Sure, though it’s hard to really put a brothel madam off her game.

4. do they ask weird questions?

Mostly, she’s asked weird questions.

5. are they curious?

Not especially. It’s not a survival trait in her world.

R: Rules

Radovan of Stalmo, Alena’s long-missing biological father.

1. do they follow rules?

Pretty much. He’s a mercenary, so in many ways his life is a series of changing rulesets to go along with employers.

2. would they be a strict or laid-back parent?

As evidenced by his other actual children later on? He’s a laid-back dad insofar as he doesn’t do punishments.

3. have they ever been consequenced for breaking a rule?

No.

4. have they broken any rules they now regret breaking?

“Don’t sleep with the boss.”

5. do they find any rules they/others follow absolutely ridiculous?

He doesn’t understand why anyone would make rules against looting. Don’t they know that’s how bonuses happen?

S: Streets

Sinrajin of Skytear.

1. are they street-smart?

Not especially. One gets the impression he was raised by wolves—in fact, he was raised by spirits. As such, he sees the world entirely differently than the Kaltekans do.

2. would they give money to someone on the streets?

Yes, he would. Spirits don’t have much of a concept of money, really.

3. have they ever gotten in a fight on the streets?

Not once! It turns out that looking like a Trugiln bloodseeker is good street cred, because people assume he’d remove their faces with his teeth if angry enough.

4. has anything happened to them on the streets?

Nothing notable.

5. are they cautious when out?

Not a bit! Someone made the mistake of pointing out that Sinrajin was unlikely to be robbed by anyone unwilling to face the reality that he could probably break them in half, and he runs with that assumption.

T: Truth

Tirane of Queen’s Crossing, the token uninvolved human who is suddenly in the midst of shit.

1. are they honest?

Sort of. She does tend to qualify her statements by admitting she’s not really telling the whole truth, ever, but she does try to do people a good turn.

2. can they tell if someone is lying?

Absolutely. It’s a part of her magic skillset.

3. is it obvious when they’re lying?

She’s not especially good at it, so yes.

4. have they lied about anything they regret lying about?

Nope.

5. have they told truths that have been spread against their will?

Probably.

Y: You

1. how old were you when you created them?

It varies. A lot of these characters have been around since I was eleven or so, and some have been around for less than a month. Such is author life.

2. what inspired you to create them?

I really, really wanted to tell a story.

3. were they different when they were first created?

Oh boy, yeah. Some of them have had total personality flips. Others have been molded to suit their roles. Others stayed mostly the same, or at least their one-word summary did.

4. do you enjoy writing them more than other characters?

Some of them?

5. what’s your favorite thing about them?

They’re all great in different ways. Or despicable. But at least they’re running around in a created world and doing what characters do.

Z: Zebra

Zinnia Veritos

1. what’s their favorite animal?

Songbirds, especially small ones with bright colors.

2. do they like animals?

Yes.

3. cats or dogs?

Cats.

4. what’s their dream pet?

A housecat that won’t eat her bird friends.

5. do they have any pets at the moment?

Nope.

#terramir gang #Oceanus #Alena #Mitra #Lucretia #Zinnia #Fiamma #Tirane #Radovan #Pyrrhos #Brigid #Quillyn #Ismene #Naviyd #Sinrajin #Fithrain #Keyah #Nimbus #Cirrus #Hokide #Arno

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cabinboy100 · 7 years ago

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MR. ROBOT: Season 3: Some Pre-finale Big Picture Theories…

Hello, Friend.

Gonna ramble on some Big Ideas that might explain what’s going on in the WhiteRosey sectors of MR. ROBOT…

WHITEROSE CAN HACK REALITY.

The universe is a simulation, or at least effectively functions and exists as one, and WhiteRose is able to hack it. Currently only to a degree. She can copy and paste elements that exist and have existed in the universe. She can edit them, but only in certain ways. She currently has limited write permissions.

We've seen her do this when she copied a young Angela from the past and pasted her into the present to interview the adult Angela.

We also saw *someone* do this when Trenton's brother (who actually left town with his parents) was copied and pasted onto the beach next to Elliot. Each of these instances was edited, tailored to accomplish a certain task. This is the kind of "undo" that WhiteRose has promised and tantalized Irving and Angela with.

However, she cannot yet deliver what Angela wishes for—the return of her mother and Elliot's father, hale and hearty. Editing them to the degree that they would be cured and healthy is currently beyond WhiteRose's power. She needs to proceed with her Congo project in order to gain that ability. WhiteRose's ultimate goal is to be able to edit the universe so that she can make lasting and stable changes, for herself, and to herself. In order to achieve that, anyone and everyone may be expendable, but also revivable.

WHITEROSE HAS A TIME MACHINE.

WhiteRose already possesses time travel capability, and she's used it countless times, each time tweaking events to get closer to an ultimate desired result. She doesn't believe in coincidence because when it occurs around her, she's had a hand in manufacturing it. In the events and timeline we see unfolding on the show, Elliot Alderson is the right person with the right connections and experiences in the right place at the right time for what WhiteRose needs to be done. I do not think that WhiteRose's time travel allows for a person to get into a DeLorean in 2015 and step out of it in 1985. Instead, what she can do is send herself (and maybe others) information. Maybe it's "psychic," a la PRINCE OF DARKNESS, but I prefer to think it's electronic, a la STEIN'S GATE. An email with an attached document sent from her personal server in 2015 to her AOL address in 1990.

How would this help WhiteRose? I'm gonna run thru a couple of *hypothetical* loops to demonstrate…

Let's say that in a previous iteration of the universe, WhiteRose identified Edward Alderson, Elliot's dad, as a useful tool in a takedown of ECorp and the global economy. He was poisoned by ECorp and had the coding/hacking chops to damage them. WhiteRose could have used her resources to encourage him to make the attempt. It fails. Edward can only do so much damage to ECorp in the 90s before he dies. However, his son grows up to be an accomplished hacker at a time when ECorp is committed to digital records and vulnerable to a catastrophic attack. But for whatever reason, this Elliot doesn't have the drive to pursue such a course. At the same time WhiteRose, Zhang, and the Dark Army try many paths to sink the economy and gain leverage for acquiring the Congo, but none pan out.

When WhiteRose believes she's exhausted her options in that iteration, she assembles an information payload—added to the one she received from her previous older self—for her younger self. ZIPs it, attaches it to her Chronomail, and hits [SEND]. The next iteration begins. This time, WhiteRose tweaks details at the Washington Township plant so that Edward dies earlier (perhaps by stepping up the timeline of her pet project there?). In the wake of his father's death, this Elliot makes toppling ECorp his lifelong goal. He grows up and assemble the fsociety team, but he's too reckless, and he gets himself caught or killed. His aggression needs to be tempered. He needs to be introduced to some already available channels instead of brute forcing his way every step of the way. Again, WhiteRose has many irons in the fire, but none prove successful. She assembles a new payload, updated with this iteration's edits and outcomes, and clicks [SEND] again.

The next iteration begins. This time, WhiteRose engineers events so that Elliot has a sister and a best friend who share his interests and motivation. Darlene is another hacker, naturally more reckless than Elliot, enough so that Elliot has to step up his responsible side. Angela is another victim of ECorp, whose shared orbit guides Elliot to a position beside her at AllSafe. This Elliot wants to take down ECorp, has the skills and access, and is levelheaded enough to accomplish it. However, when he does the math and comes up with an unavoidable body count, he cannot go through the hack, at least not 100%. WhiteRose takes notes and launches the next payload into the next iteration.

This time, WhiteRose somehow gets Edward to reveal his illness to Elliot in secret, leading to the first time Edward pushes his son out the window, and so, the introduction of Mr. Robot. Everything goes nearly perfectly, but the hack is thwarted. There's one piece missing, and WhiteRose thinks she's located the raw material from which to carve it. She adds her new experiences and insights to the next payload and begins the next iteration.

This is the one we're watching. The one in which Elliot breaks his father's trust, angering him enough to push him out a second story window, creating Mr. Robot. The one in which Mr. Robot recruits fsociety and plans the hack. The one in which Angela's influence gets Elliot to the place he needs to be—Allsafe—to enable Mr. Robot's hack. The one in which they both meet Tyrell Wellick, the final (perhaps) piece of the puzzle, and low and behold, a bloodless 5/9—well, y'know, not counting the aftermath—and leverage enough for WhiteRose/Zhang to acquire the Congo!

If this is the furthest that WhiteRose has gotten, then she is in truly uncharted territory. We've seen how she has numerous strategies in play (influencing the media to pump up a certain pompous buffoon's Q rating), and I think it's in that same vein that she turns to Grant for his advice in light of Elliot's proposal of Stage 3, something that would not have come up in any previous iteration of events. WhiteRose has the coltan mines of the Congo now. Maybe Elliot *has* outlived his usefulness. No doubt she's already made notes for her younger self to take steps to quell the unrest in the Congo so that her pet project can be transported there hassle-free in the next iteration.

And what is her pet project? Her ultimate goal? Y'know, assuming she's already got this method of time travel? What could top that?

What about the ability to run these iterations as simulations, allowing her to not have to *live* each iteration? Not that she feels it, but intellectually, for a hacker of time, that's got to be aggravating, right? Of course, each of those simulations is an iteration, too, so a subjective, paradoxical advance.

How about hacking reality? Basically, the ability I discuss in my first theory. I feel like WhiteRose's ultimate goal involves taming cosmic forces to perhaps selfishly right a personal (cosmic) wrong. Did Zhang ever have a sister? Do Zhang and WhiteRose each wish to live as two separate beings? Or is WhiteRose her true self, and Zhang a mask? Would WhiteRose wish to recode herself as a biological woman? Or somehow able to transform at will? Perhaps her pet project, once complete, can realize these wishes.

This would also make her promise to Angela a deliverable one, as I describe above.

TIME TRAVEL AND STUFF…

I would *love* for WhiteRose to have or be working toward, classic pulpy scifi time travel, but I just don't see it working out. Assuming that's the goal, and that she achieves it, she can't use time travel to go back and change or fix anything without endangering the machinations she engineered to enable it in the first place. Which logically means she can only go forward in time, and aside from hoverboards and gambling, where's the fun in that, right?

Huh. Something (zany) just occurred to me. Maybe she wants to go *all the way* forward, to the Singularity and/or Omega Point. Sorry, "and/or" because I forget if they're mutually exclusive. I’m fuzzy on the details of each. In any case, once then-there, assuming there isn't some fascist super villain who's somehow able to dominate the state, WhiteRose can live or relive any life she would want…or something. Right?

Yeah, like I said, that *just* occurred to me.

Multiverse-hopping also sounds like fun, but I'm not seeing the upside to that, either.

Maybe WhiteRose has been contacted by an alternate version of herself and given instructions on how to bridge and cross 'verses, but to what end? A Council of Cross-Time WhiteRoses who manipulate markets and technology across timelines? I'd *love* that, but it seems incongruous with the fabric and feel of the MR. ROBOT we've watched for three seasons.

Maybe WhiteRose speaks of these things in earnest with certain parties in order to manipulate them, as dramatically seen with Angela. Irving has mentioned that he doesn't find the possibility of some kind of undo (Angela and Irving never name it) completely unbelievable, and I love the idea that such a promise is part of Irving's motivation, but just as likely is the notion that Irving is toeing the line with Angela, saying what he's supposed to say to keep her motivated.

But you *know* Irving wants WhiteRose to deliver a reality in which BEACH TOWEL is a huge best seller and optioned for an HBO series, right? =)

Some last bits of crazy talk…

Washington Township has been the home of WhiteRose’s project for a very long time. If time travel is in play, maybe it’s only available for the lifetime of the functioning core of that project. How the heck is she having that “packed up” and moved to the Congo? Or is she having a second/newer facility assembled there?

What properties of the DRC region and/or coltan would be so valuable to the presumably exotic science involved in WhiteRose’s project? EM radiation? Magnetism? Radioactivity?

The Mandela Effect is visible everywhere in the show—and I *love* it—but maybe that's just the reality that this show lives in.

I'd like for there to be an opposing force to WhiteRose, someone we haven't met yet, who's playing the game at her level, or maybe even one level above, unknown to WhiteRose. Maybe it's a future Elliot. Or someone we've been told is dead. Or an alternate WhiteRose. Maybe Elliot's landlord (is that Guillermo del Toro or G. G. Martin? =) is the Yoda to WhiteRose's Emperor?

I think that someone or organization has repurposed Flipper's chip and is using him to track or spy or spoof Elliot and Mr. Robot. Krista's dick ex returning Flipper to Elliot as a curse on him was just a bit too dramatic for me to be legitimate.

Does WhiteRose know that Elliot shares his body with Mr. Robot? Does she *recognize* this dual persona existence because she does the same with Minister Zhang? Were WhiteRose's parents exposed to the same poison cocktail that killed Elliot and Angela's parents, but under different circumstances?

I know I've got more crazy talk in my rusty innards, but it's not coming to me just now. Hopefully events and revelations in this week's episode will rule some of it out. Just as likely, tho, it will inspire more. =)

Be seeing you.

Keep on keepin' on~

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strwbrymoonchild · 5 years ago

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Creating Our Own Spaces: Open Television and the Importance of Intersectional Streaming Platforms

Open Television (OTV) supports Chicago-based artists by producing indie web series and pilots that tell intersectional stories. The platform revolutionizes streaming by highlighting nuances in the lived experiences of people of color and the LGBTQ community, and by intentionally holding space for joy, healing, and humor. Lack of diversity in film is well-documented; a recent study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative shows that of the top 100 films in 2019, 78 had no LGBTQ characters and 94 had no female-identified LGBTQ characters. The study also found that of 4,357 speaking roles, only 61 (1.4%) were LGBTQ, forty-five characters were gay, 10 characters were lesbian, 3 characters were bisexual and 3 characters were transgender. All three trans characters had a total screen time of no more than 2 minutes. About 71% of these LGBTQ speaking roles were white. While there have been both strides and shortcomings in efforts to increase the depth of LGBTQ and BIPOC television characters in mainstream media, diversity, and inclusion behind the camera is just as integral to filmmaking as representation on screen.

There are some perceptions that we are entering into a Black film Renaissance. The rise of shows like Insecure and Atlanta FX in addition to major Black blockbuster moments for films like Black Panther and Moonlight all suggest that progress is being made. However, the figures reported by The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative show that the number of movies with Black Directors in 2019 fell by more than half; only nine movies released in 2019 had Black directors whereas 15 movies released in 2018 had Black directors.Even when we look at Black and POC directors as a whole, the numbers don’t get much more encouraging; the study also found that out of the 112 directors that made movies in 2019, 19.6% were from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. While representation for Black directors has been halved, the percentage of women directors helming the most popular films more than doubled between 2018 and 2019. Nevertheless, their share of representation remains critically low. The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that only 10.6% of directors across the top 100 films of 2019 were women. When it comes to writing and producing, representation for women is only slightly better. Women made up 14.4 % of writers across the top 100 films, and only 21.1% of producers.

Diversity behind the scenes is so crucial because it ensures that marginalized communities can tell their stories using characters that have distinct voices, complex backgrounds, agency that extends beyond tokenistic supporting roles, or even leads roles that myopically reinforce tired tropes and harmful stereotypes. For example, when Black writers are in the room, they can construct characters that speak like us instead of mis/overusing awkward AAVE that’s cut and pasted from Twitter into contexts that don’t fit. When women writers are in the room, they can squelch manic pixie tropes and fridging for the sake of male character development. When LGBTQ writers are in the room they can mitigate issues like queerbaiting or focus solely on the trauma of coming out stories without centering queer joy and romance. Similarly, when producers with marginalized identities are in the room, they can thwart gatekeeping by expanding the production value of films made by marginalized artists with limited resources, and by prioritizing inexpensive and creative ways of funding and distributing media (e.g. crowdfunding, virtual screenings, DIY film festivals, etc.). Furthermore, when filmmaking spaces lack diversity, the result can be toxic and alienating, which stifles creativity and demoralizes BIPOC and/or LGBTQ creators. OTV has shown that one of the keys to creating authentic stories is not only getting diverse voices in the room but also making the room a brave space that emphasizes accountability and community while allowing artists the independence and freedom to innovatively experiment with storytelling without fear of exploitation, bigotry, or violence.

OTV exemplifies how critical it is to not only feed diverse narratives into the mainstream media, but to introduce more accessible, inclusive, and alternative ways of filmmaking.

Executives in the film industry often buy into the misconception that intersectional stories that have characters with marginalized identities aren’t worth the investment because they only appeal to niche audiences. On the contrary, many viewers don’t just want cookie cutter, predominately white shows; they are hungry for diverse content that is striking, informational, and binge-worthy. A study released by UCLA revealed that in 2019, films with 41%-50% minority cast earned the most from box office ticket sales, whereas films with the least diverse casts performed the poorest. The #RepresentationMatters report that the National Research Group released in September 2020 shows that 2 in 3 Black Americans don’t see themselves represented in movies or television, and 86% of Black Americans want to see more representative stories on screen. Taken together, these findings suggest that when underrepresented groups see someone who looks like them in a film, it makes them want to support it more because representation is such a coveted rarity for these groups.

It's not enough to sprinkle diversity into mainstream media to increase sales. OTV exemplifies how critical it is to not only feed diverse narratives into the mainstream media, but to introduce more accessible, inclusive, and alternative ways of filmmaking. Recently, Open Television started the OTV Fellows program for emerging writers and directors from marginalized communities. The program seeks out and supports promising talent, helping them build their portfolios for a career in the film industry. OTV also hosts a seven-part workshop series called OTV Study Hall, which features a wide range of panelists and offers insights into career development, production, and marketing.

When we create intersectional TV platforms that are for and by us, shows that spotlight multiple marginalized identities can reach their full potential, and flourish in conversation with content that has a similar range. There is power and value in seeing multi-faceted, genre-bending, intersectional stories as the centerpiece of streaming, rather than cramming them into a specialty category tucked away in a corner of Netflix or Hulu or trying to make them fit in a category where they don’t belong.

Check out some top picks from OTV’s incredible content below

The T | For fans of Pose FX and Lovesick

The T follows the relationship between a Trans white woman named Jo and a queer Black man named Carter. The two are former lovers turned best friends who support each other through the insecurities and bigotry they face as they re-enter the dating world.

You’re So Talented | For fans of The Incredible Jessica James and Brown Girls

You’re So Talented follows Bea, an actor looking for work in Chicago and navigating the twists and turns of love and life in her twenties. A character many millennial BIPOC creatives out there can relate to, Bea does her best to find meaning through her art while keeping the bills paid. Through it all, her best friend’s Devin and Jesse are always there for her. (You may recognize the actor who plays Bea, Sam Bailey, as the Director and Producer of hit web series, Brown Girls).

The Right Swipe | For fans of Broad City and The Perfect Date

We’ve all seen our fair share of tragic online dating app profiles: a man holding big fish twice his size, stale jokes about The Office, shameless gym mirror selfies, etc.. In The Right Swipe, best friends and business partners India and Margo team up to start a business fixing men’s dating profiles. They extend their services to a diverse set of clients including a trans man, a queer poet, and a hotep. They have 3 simple ground rules 1. They must use their powers for good, 2. They charge clients on a sliding scale, and 3. No sleeping with or dating clients.

Velvet | For fans of Insecure

A hyper-competitive young professional named Demetra attempts to revive her social life by striking up a friendship with her cooler more laidback coworker Cymone. The duo eventually builds a squad of friends who take on the city of Chicago as they explore their own identities and relationships with each other.

The Haven | For fans of Orange Is the New Black (before they killed off Poussey)

The Haven follows the story of overworked and underpaid staff members at a domestic violence shelter. Once accepted into the shelter, residents of The Haven have only 90 days of refuge before they must find a way to propel themselves onto a new life path. The odds are stacked against those seeking a fresh start as they face a range of obstacles including addiction, mental illness, poverty, immigration complexities, and PTSD.

Damaged Goods | For fans of Euphoria

Bathed in technicolor and barely getting by, four young, messy creatives of color walk down uncertain paths of self-discovery in Chicago. When Sanavi tries to dismantle the Boy’s Club in her white-dominated workplace, she’s met with hostility and discrimination. Meanwhile, Caleb navigates the queer club scene and struggles to make ends meet. In contrast, Marlo thrives as a Black wellness guru/yogi/influencer. Ezra supports himself as a weed dealer and Uber driver, but has big dreams of becoming an artist.

Otito Greg-Obi is a poet and aspiring screenwriter based in Washington D.C. Her poetry appears in "small poems for the masses," a quarterly zine by Post Ghost Press. She is a former member of The Excelano Project, a poetry collective in Philadelphia. When she’s not writing you can find her slow-mo milly rocking in the pouring rain to MorMor, baking sourdough bread, over/underwatering succulents, or knitting something cozy. Her favorite color is mint green, and she’s obsessed with pop culture and with television (particularly dramedies and dystopian sci-fi). You can find her on Twitter at @otweetoh

Like this post? Support our writers by buying us a coffee

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2dizzle · 7 years ago

Note

gay?

Gay is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term was originally used to mean “carefree”, “happy”, or “bright and showy”.

The term’s use as a reference to homosexuality may date as early as the late 19th century, but its use gradually increased in the 20th century.[1] In modern English, gay has come to be used as an adjective, and as a noun, referring to the people, especially to gay males, and the practices and cultures associated with homosexuality. By the end of the 20th century, the word gay was recommended by major LGBT groups and style guides to describe people attracted to members of the same sex.[2][3]

At about the same time, a new, pejorative use became prevalent in some parts of the world. Among younger speakers, the word has a meaning ranging from derision (e.g., equivalent to rubbish or stupid) to a light-hearted mockery or ridicule (e.g., equivalent to weak, unmanly, or lame). In this use, the word rarely means “homosexual”, as it is often used, for example, to refer to an inanimate object or abstract concept of which one disapproves. The extent to which these usages still retain connotations of homosexuality has been debated and harshly criticized.[4][5]

The word gay arrived in English during the 12th century from Old French gai, most likely deriving ultimately from a Germanicsource.[1] In English, the word’s primary meaning was “joyful”, “carefree”, “bright and showy”, and the word was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. For example, the optimistic 1890s are still often referred to as the Gay Nineties. The title of the 1938 French ballet Gaîté Parisienne (“Parisian Gaiety”), which became the 1941 Warner Brothers movie, The Gay Parisian,[7] also illustrates this connotation. It was apparently not until the 20th century that the word began to be used to mean specifically “homosexual”, although it had earlier acquired sexual connotations.[1]

The derived abstract noun gaiety remains largely free of sexual connotations and has, in the past, been used in the names of places of entertainment; for example W.B. Yeats heard Oscar Wilde lecture at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.[8]

Sexualization

The word may have started to acquire associations of immorality as early as the 14th century, but had certainly acquired them by the 17th.[1] By the late 17th century it had acquired the specific meaning of “addicted to pleasures and dissipations”,[9] an extension of its primary meaning of “carefree” implying “uninhibited by moral constraints”. A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer, and a gay house a brothel.[1] The use of gay to mean “homosexual” was often an extension of its application to prostitution: a gay boy was a young man or boy serving male clients.[10] Similarly, a gay cat was a young male apprenticed to an older hobo, commonly exchanging sex and other services for protection and tutelage.[1] The application to homosexuality was also an extension of the word’s sexualized connotation of “carefree and uninhibited”, which implied a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage, documented as early as the 1920s, was likely present before the 20th century,[1] although it was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles, as in the once-common phrase “gay Lothario”,[11] or in the title of the book and film The Gay Falcon (1941), which concerns a womanizing detective whose first name is “Gay”. Similarly, Fred Gilbert and G. H. MacDermott’s music hall song of the 1880s, “Charlie Dilke Upset the Milk” – “Master Dilke upset the milk/When taking it home to Chelsea;/ The papers say that Charlie’s gay/Rather a wilful wag!” – referred to Sir Charles Dilke’s alleged heterosexual impropriety.[12] Giving testimony in court in 1889, the rentboy John Saul stated: “I occasionally do odd-jobs for different gay people.”[13] Well into the mid 20th century a middle-aged bachelor could be described as “gay”, indicating that he was unattached and therefore free, without any implication of homosexuality. This usage could apply to women too. The British comic strip Jane, first published in the 1930s, described the adventures of Jane Gay. Far from implying homosexuality, it referred to her free-wheeling lifestyle with plenty of boyfriends (while also punning on Lady Jane Grey).

A passage from Gertrude Stein’s Miss Furr & Miss Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable published use of the word to refer to a homosexual relationship. According to Linda Wagner-Martin (Favored Strangers: Gertrude Stein and her Family (1995)) the portrait “featured the sly repetition of the word gay, used with sexual intent for one of the first times in linguistic history,” and Edmund Wilson (1951, quoted by James Mellow in Charmed Circle (1974)) agreed.[14] For example:

They were … gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, … they were quite regularly gay.

The word continued to be used with the dominant meaning of “carefree”, as evidenced by the title of The Gay Divorcee (1934), a musical film about a heterosexual couple.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word gay in apparent reference to homosexuality. In a scene in which the Cary Grant character’s clothes have been sent to the cleaners, he is forced to wear a woman’s feather-trimmed robe. When another character asks about his robe, he responds, “Because I just went gay all of a sudden!” Since this was a mainstream film at a time when the use of the word to refer to cross-dressing (and, by extension, homosexuality) would still be unfamiliar to most film-goers, the line can also be interpreted to mean, “I just decided to do something frivolous.”[15]

In 1950, the earliest reference found to date for the word gay as a self-described name for homosexuals comes from Alfred A. Gross, executive secretary for the George W. Henry Foundation, who said in the June 1950 issue of SIR magazine: “I have yet to meet a happy homosexual. They have a way of describing themselves as gay but the term is a misnomer. Those who are habitues of the bars frequented by others of the kind, are about the saddest people I’ve ever seen.”[16]

Shift to specifically homosexual

By the mid-20th century, gay was well established in reference to hedonistic and uninhibited lifestyles[9] and its antonym straight, which had long had connotations of seriousness, respectability, and conventionality, had now acquired specific connotations of heterosexuality.[17] In the case of gay, other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress (“gay apparel”) led to association with camp and effeminacy. This association no doubt helped the gradual narrowing in scope of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures. Gay was the preferred term since other terms, such as queer, were felt to be derogatory.[18]Homosexual is perceived as excessively clinical,[19][20][21] since the sexual orientation now commonly referred to as “homosexuality” was at that time a mental illness diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

In mid-20th century Britain, where male homosexuality was illegal until the Sexual Offences Act 1967, to openly identify someone as homosexual was considered very offensive and an accusation of serious criminal activity. Additionally, none of the words describing any aspect of homosexuality were considered suitable for polite society. Consequently, a number of euphemisms were used to hint at suspected homosexuality. Examples include “sporty” girls and “artistic” boys,[22] all with the stress deliberately on the otherwise completely innocent adjective.

The sixties marked the transition in the predominant meaning of the word gay from that of “carefree” to the current “homosexual”.

In the British comedy-drama film Light Up the Sky! (1960), directed by Lewis Gilbert, about the antics of a British Army searchlight squad during World War II, there is a scene in the mess hut where the character played by Benny Hill proposes an after-dinner toast. He begins, “I’d like to propose…” at which point a fellow diner, played by Sidney Tafler, interjects “Who to?”, suggesting a proposal of marriage. The Benny Hill character responds, “Not to you for start, you ain’t my type”. He then adds in mock doubt, “Oh, I don’t know, you’re rather gay on the quiet.”

By 1963, a new sense of the word gay was known well enough to be used by Albert Ellis in his book The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Man-Hunting. Similarly, Hubert Selby, Jr. in his 1964 novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, could write that a character “took pride in being a homosexual by feeling intellectually and esthetically superior to those (especially women) who weren’t gay….”[23] Later examples of the original meaning of the word being used in popular culture include the theme song to the 1960–1966 animated TV series The Flintstones, whereby viewers are assured that they will “have a gay old time.” Similarly, the 1966 Herman’s Hermits song “No Milk Today”, which became a Top 10 hit in the UK and a Top 40 hit in the U.S., included the lyric “No milk today, it was not always so / The company was gay, we’d turn night into day.”[24] In June 1967, the headline of the review of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album in the British daily newspaper The Times stated, “The Beatles revive hopes of progress in pop music with their gay new LP”.[25] Yet in the same year, The Kinks recorded “David Watts”.[26] Ostensibly about schoolboy envy, the song also operated as an in-joke, as related in Jon Savage’s “The Kinks: The Official Biography”, because the song took its name from a homosexual promoter they’d encountered who’d had romantic designs on songwriter Ray Davies’ teenage brother; and the lines “he is so gay and fancy free” attest to the ambiguity of the word’s meaning at that time, with the second meaning evident only for those in the know.[27] As late as 1970, the first episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show has the demonstrably straight Mary Richards’ downstairs neighbor, Phyllis, breezily declaiming that Mary is, at age 30, still “young and gay.”

There is little doubt that the homosexual sense is a development of the word’s traditional meaning, as described above. It has nevertheless been claimed that gay stands for “Good As You”, but there is no evidence for this: it is a backronym created as popular etymology.[28]

Sexual orientation, identity, behaviour

The American Psychological Association defines sexual orientation as “an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes,” ranging “along a continuum, from exclusive attraction to the other sex to exclusive attraction to the same sex.”[29] Sexual orientation can also be “discussed in terms of three categories: heterosexual (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to members of the other sex), gay/lesbian (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to members of one’s own sex), and bisexual (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to both men and women).”[29]

According to Rosario, Schrimshaw, Hunter, Braun (2006), “the development of a lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) sexual identity is a complex and often difficult process. Unlike members of other minority groups (e.g., ethnic and racial minorities), most LGB individuals are not raised in a community of similar others from whom they learn about their identity and who reinforce and support that identity. Rather, LGB individuals are often raised in communities that are either ignorant of or openly hostile toward homosexuality.”[30]

The British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell has argued that the term gay is merely a cultural expression which reflects the current status of homosexuality within a given society, and claiming that “Queer, gay, homosexual … in the long view, they are all just temporary identities. One day, we will not need them at all.”[31]

If a person engages in sexual activity with a partner of the same sex but does not self-identify as gay, terms such as ’closeted’, ‘discreet’, or ’bi-curious’ may apply. Conversely, a person may identify as gay without having had sex with a same-sex partner. Possible choices include identifying as gay socially while choosing to be celibate or while anticipating a first homosexual experience. Further, a bisexual person might also identify as “gay” but others may consider gay and bisexual to be mutually exclusive. There are some who are drawn to the same sex but neither engage in sexual activity nor identify as gay; these could have the term asexual applied, even though asexual generally can mean no attraction or involve heterosexual attraction but no sexual activity.

TerminologyMain article:

Terminology of homosexuality

Some reject the term homosexual as an identity-label because they find it too clinical-sounding;[20][21][32] they believe it is too focused on physical acts rather than romance or attraction, or too reminiscent of the era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Conversely, some reject term gay as an identity-label because they perceive the cultural connotations to be undesirable or because of the negative connotations of the slang usage of the word.

Style guides, like the following from the Associated Press, call for gay over homosexual:

Gay: Used to describe men and women attracted to the same sex, though lesbian is the more common term for women. Preferred over homosexual except in clinical contexts or references to sexual activity.[33]

There are those who reject the gay label for reasons other than shame or negative connotations. Writer Alan Bennett[34] and fashion icon André Leon Talley[35] are like others in such as fashion and the arts, out and open gay men who yet reject being labeled gay, finding it too limiting, slotting them into label boxes.

Gay community vs. LGBT communityMain article:

LGBT community

Starting in the mid-1980s in the United States, a conscious effort was under way within what was then only called the gay community, to add the term lesbianto the name of all gay organizations that catered to both male and female homosexuals, and to use the terminology of gay and lesbian, or lesbian/gay when referring to that community. So, organizations like the National Gay Task Force became the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. For many ardent feminist lesbians, it was also important that the L come first, lest an L following a G become another symbol of male dominance over women,[36] although other women prefer the usage gay woman. In the 1990s, this was followed by another equally concerted push to include the terminology specifically pointing out the inclusion of bisexual, transgender, intersex, and other people, reflecting the intra-community debate as to whether these other sexual minorities were part of the same human rights movement. Most news organizations have formally adopted variations of this use, following the example and preference of the organizations, as reflected in their press releases and public communications.

#hope that helps to clear up any questions!

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doomedandstoned · 7 years ago

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BAILEY’S CHOICE

Youngblood Supercult guitarist Bailey Gonzales shares her 10 favorite albums of Autumn.

Photo by Johnny Hubbard at Doomed & Stoned Fest

First off, let me preface by saying that this list is just a fraction of what I would include on a good, solid Autumn playlist, but everything must end at some point. Most of these you’ve probably heard, some you may not be familiar with, and others perhaps long forgotten and thus need a good revisiting. So here goes:

1. Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young – Déjà vu

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This has been in my catalog since I first started smoking weed in the fall of my freshman year of high school and learned to enjoy the hazy, beautiful strains of intricate harmonies that permeate CSNY’s iconic brand of folk-blues rock. Their albums were always on rotation in my house when I was growing up, but until I started to fully understand its cosmic, layered beauty, Déjà vu fell more or less into the “lame music my parents listen to” category for me. Now it’s a staple, especially as the weather starts to cool and the leaves start to turn, and I’m thrown into some kind of sepia-tinged yearning for the past. Funny how things change. This album holds some of the group’s most acclaimed work; I can’t point out a single track I’d skip over.

2. Graveyard – Graveyard

Graveyard by Graveyard

Speaking of high school—I grew up in a very small town in Southeast Kansas, and when MySpace made its debut (yes, MySpace), I found a page for this indie label called Tee Pee Records that absolutely dictated what I would listen to take the edge of my Black Sabbath cravings—this is where I was ultimately introduced to stoner rock and all of the branches of the retro heavy metal genre—and one of them that always stuck with me as I worshipped this label’s releases thereafter was Graveyard’s self-titled album. There are so many great tracks on this album, with “Thin Line” being an absolute favorite and even an echoing of one of my darkest autumn remembrances (won’t delve into it, but the subject matter will lead you where you need to go). Fantastic, timeless album.

3. Jonathan Snipes & William Hutson – Room 237

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Room 237 (2012) is a funny little documentary. I love it, despite the fact that this film lays out conspiracies about Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining that range from absolutely Kubrickesque crazy-but-plausible to totally ludicrous, leaping-to-judgement scenarios and breakdowns related to the hidden puzzles within the original adaptation. But, we are talking about music here: this album plays like Stranger Things meets Goblin meets John Carpenter. There is nothing necessarily special about it, but in trying to find an OST that would fit neatly within this list, this fella kind of jumped out to me. Not everybody enjoys soundtracks, and while I could listen to creepy, ambient synth all day long, every day, Room 237 seems like it could entrance any listener, especially with standout tracks like “To Keep From Falling Off” to “Universal Weak Male” and even with the closing track, “Dies Irae” which plays off the original theme from The Shining.

4. Trouble – Trouble

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It blows my mind that this album was released in 1990. Everything about it screams, “I WANT TO MAKE YOUR EARS BLEED: ‘70s METAL STLYE.” It’s like a lost and very angry Sir Lord Baltimore album was found in someone’s murky basement and sold in a musty, long forgotten record shop. The kind of place where you might hear whispers of dark legends. Somewhere that may be evocative, in legend, of the kind of place that Mayhem’s late singer, Dead, slit his wrists, throat, and blew his brains out and everyone commenced for this orgiastic blood feast of mourning to say, uh, “let’s take a photo of his dead body and slap it on a bootleg album cover and make necklaces out of his skull...” It’s not that harsh, but there’s definitely something spooky, dark, and forbidden about it. You may ask yourself, if you’re just hearing this album for the first time: “Why don’t they play some of these tracks on the radio?” Well, my child...do you really want to know?

5. The Steepwater Band – Revelation Sunday

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This collection of hot tunes from The Steepwater Band is, apart from 2011’s Clava, one of our band’s road staples. We often don’t agree on much when that road cagey feeling hits or when disagreements happen, which incidentally is why things tend to work well with us, but The Steepwater Band, Mount Carmel, and Gary Clark Junior are all things we can come to terms with through the van’s trebly stock speakers. Maybe it’s the bluesiness. Very moody folk-blues rock tunes, with a touch of whiskey-fueled country, is what these guys exhibit in songs like “Slow Train Drag,” “Dance Me A Number,” and “Steel Sky.” A plus material, in my book, and good for the road on a cold night’s ramble.

6. Black Sabbath – Never Say Die!

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Can people stop it with the “I’m tired of Black Sabbath” comments??? You know they are the reason we’re all here, and whether you like to admit it or not, you dig a good Sabbath tune either once in a while or every day. Doctor’s orders. Now I don’t think that a playlist is complete without a Black Sabbath album, but autumn seems the appropriate time for their fumbling, but strong conclusion — 1978’s Never Say Die! And I really don’t care that I know I’m in the minority for loving this album. To me, while it’s their most strained Ozzy-era album (I won’t even touch 13, so don’t ask), it’s full of premonitions of things to come, including a full out jazz brawl in “Breakout” that reminds me of the mean streets in Dirty Harry, and songs that might make the bravest of our genre cry, like “Junior’s Eyes.” “Shock Wave” goes through the typical rough and tumble changes that Black Sabbath fans learn to embrace, but it comes in wave after wave after wave. Hell, even the title track is nearly full-out punk rock. If you’ve avoided this album, please—give it a spin. Even if it’s only to hear Bill Ward sing. It’s the album I fell into when I joined my first band in the fall of 2008 and what pushed me into the direction of branching out to things I’d long avoided. I literally shit my pants every time the first synth breakdown in “Johnny Blade” comes over the speakers, and I think you should, too.

7. Madonna – Madonna

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Speaking of shit you probably don’t wanna read…who out of us has given Madonna’s 1983 debut a spin? Anyone? Bueller? Yeah, I didn’t think so. For you folks who can appreciate this one, I applaud you for admitting it. It’s not a sin to listen to Madonna (tell that one to the Vatican), but unless she’s been covertly transformed into Lana Del Rey or someone else on the darker and more modern side of the pop spectrum, you’d be hard pressed to find an admitted fan in our heavy underground group. And you know what? I don’t give a single fuck (yes, I learned that language from M herself). She’s a goddess, an icon, a killer songwriter—if you don’t believe me, tell that to the $400 million she has neatly tucked away—and dammit, she taught me to give a little less of a fuck in times where I don’t have too many to spare. This is another reason my parents are badass. Who in the world would buy their kid the “Like A Virgin” album only if their 11-year-old can ask for it by name without getting too embarrassed at the thought of saying “virgin” out loud to the Camelot Music clerk? Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, listen to this. Just do it...Madonna would.

8. The Midnight Ghost Train – Buffalo

Buffalo by The Midnight Ghost Train

I met Steve Moss at a show in Topeka in late 2009 at a dive bar where the drummer from my first band was singing in his new group. We did the obligatory thing and then, holy shit—this band starts playing and glasses start clinking and I swear to god I thought the whole damn place was going to cave in. They play a bunch of tunes and I’m so fully entranced it’s stupid. After the show, I went up to their singer/guitarist and said, “Um, that was really fucking awesome. I loved how you slipped “Hand of Doom into the middle of one of your songs.” Bam. We were instant buds. I couldn’t believe that they had come out of Topeka, Kansas. Later, while they were prepping to record 2012’s Buffalo, we had a very memorable fall jam session and some shows together, and EVERY. DAMNED. TIME. I felt like there was just something insanely special happening. Buffalo proved to be an instant classic, and even though The Midnight Ghost Train boys seem to always be on tour, I visit with my old pal Steve from time to time when he’s around, and nothing can erase those crazy, almost LSD-like imprinted memories of our house shows together. Hell, we reunited again just last month in another Topeka dive bar. I still have almost 3 hours’ worth of an interview I need to write that documents Steve’s early life up until the recording of Cold Was The Ground. The circle goes round and round. And I sure as hell can’t shake that sound.

9. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Green River

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I don’t know what everyone else thinks about when they hear the track “Green River” from Creedence Clearwater Revival, but I think of Gary Ridgeway. I know that’s way far off, but I can’t help it. I also think about the album cover, and how many people still try to copy it, unintentionally. And I think about Stephen King. If you’ve read a few of his novels, you know from some of his passages, he’s a total CCR freak. I’ll give him a pass for mentioning Springsteen so much just because he’s a damn genius. But I bet the casual listener has never heard the song “Sinister Purpose” on the radio airwaves. It sounds like it belongs on a damn Leaf Hound album or something. Thank god for small favors. This is the epitome of southern blues rock. All you Lynyrd Skynyrd fans can fight me (although I won’t knock them), but CCR has earned their grimy, yet rightful spot as the Bayou’s most raw and creepy rock group. And way down in the fall, there’s always a bad moon rising.

10. Buffalo – Dead Forever...

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Man, I was going to write up a few more albums, but this is the end of the line, folks. Australia’s Buffalo caps it off with their 1972 album, Dead Forever... I can see this piece being released today, and that’s why I’m so glad everyone in this community puts out music that can rival little-known bands like Buffalo. I have a sweet spot for this group. Nobody will ever be able to answer why this killer band could never receive any airplay, and that question still lingers as absolute over processed shit continues to infiltrate the airwaves and real emotion can’t shine through. One of the promotional stickers for this record was, “Play this album LOUD.” Seen that before? Is history repeating itself in belittling our efforts to get out there and WARP THE FUCK out of people’s minds? I guess so. But we can fix that. Put the needle on some Buffalo, don your battle jacket, and work on getting some fuzz into some onlooker’s ears. Listen carefully, and don’t let the Buffalo situation happen to us all.

Hear Bailey's 'Autumn Vibes' Playlist on Spotify

Photo by Johnny Hubbard

The Great American Death Rattle by Youngblood Supercult

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tillymint7 · 5 years ago

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Jorge Menna Barretto 🌟🌎

#Just notes for now #

From Brazil artist and a scholar

Moving to Liverpool in April 🤗

Jorge will be in Liverpool Biennial July 2020

One foot in each practice they feed each other

Project with the uni linked with the biennial

2014 started sites specific art practice

Sites shape the art

Linking food production to land sculptures

Look at the park around the biennial through the eyes of our digestive systems look at the plants that are edibles plantine

Site specific smoothies environmental sculpture

Food being a mediator in relation to society

2016 32nd biennial

Food forests - agroforestry - regeneration of land

Huge problem concrete and brass building further away from the forest

How can we talk about forest in a place that is so remote and far removed from it

Spiral jetty - 1970 Robert Smithson

Distance was part of the work it was not meant to be visited - articulated the distance

Took advantage of the distance - film writing drawing not documental approach all part of the work evolve from one system.

Knowing the work doesn’t mean you saw it.

Not sure what shape his art would take suggesting a moment of doubt - interesting state. Let the site determine his work - has an image. Like installationart

Considering the space as a blank space or blank canvas let the site determine his work be receptive to the space let the site make suggestions making it a collaborative works between him and the site, taking elements from the site itself

Ecological implications to it

1969 Sundo Myed ??

In Brazil site specific this was also happening. Determine by the sounds listening in an extended sense

President has caused issue - why rain forest fires where happening - related to agriculture 90% of deforestation caused by agriculture.

Artist is now informed humans transformative ability of the landscape.

What we eat effects the shape of the landscape where we live.

Our digestive systems as a sculpting tool

Environmental sculpture

Food forest in Brazil exact opposite of the monoculture anything that is not crop/sugar cane

Natural succession- moss weeds minerals bushes, fruit, flowers, insects, birds, seed and trees forest making mechanisms it happens 247 easy to spot it the city budliers

Monoculture is trying to stop that from happening by just producing one species through machines and pesticides

Food forest feeds natural succession

Farmer creates light in a way of pruning sculpturing the plant to sculpture light creating growth excellent

Today amazon forest is more of a food forest than much more than an environment of nature

Site not site

Food is imprinted in the site

The pavilion served food from the food forest people eat the food produced in the forest

Tells you the story of the environment. It tells your body the story of complexity the food tells your cells about complexity.

Restaurants can be a place for resting also. Galleries can be tiring they are that rest place.

Restaurant is the interval to the show, no text no pictures and no explanation.

The food would be the protagonist some people would go to the restaurant and not know that they were part of the work until the work was published

Restauro - restoration you can also regenerate the environment by going to the restaurant. Worked with small farms who worked with Afro forestry. Your vision can not travel more than a few meters very dense sound scape - even through we were visiting food forest

Also recorded soundscape of the monoculture very quite no life no sounds.

Collective table, furniture inspired by the forest using layers like the forest.

Soundscapes could be listened too the farmers were interviewed in the farms so their voice was part of the soundscape

Food site specific

Fixed menu didn’t have a fixed menu bring what you have and we will make food from what you bring crops determined the menu

Very flexible and creative f

Landscape jar inspired by the forest

Farmers visited by the farmers

7 types of bananas

Listening as an engaging activity. State of vulnerability

Keep the works Portuguese take 3 “enters out of sculpture you get listening

Translation into English when Brazil was ‘discovered’ people already living there not discovered.

No animals accustom to live with man. They are in better condition than we are for all the wheat and vegetables we eat.

Based their food without domesticating animals to eat.

Even though it is considered a highly sufficient Ed way to each England was a forest island and we can eat from our natural forest 🌳

Unruly edges describing what plantations are and what monocultures are.

Plantations created industry deepen domestication they remove the love from

Plants and places Labour was forced through Slavery and control. We see this as the only way to produce crops but people were alienated from crops and this was taken from granted.

Visited a banana plantations one species of banana heroic conquering of his space.

He had an orchard he said his family ‘a yellow smile’ only eat from his orchard.

Food was product but family were protected from the sprayed bananas

I’m concerned about these issues.

Urgent image

Funny and complaining about the restaurant

People could get more information from the project from the people in the tea - shirts

Art helped people’s health

On a need to know them -

Your our digestive enzymes - not force feed

Smithson definitely an influence with a known site

Systemic thinking

Where is the art in this thing

People thought it was the displayed food but not the whole thing

Liverpool - plantations where the engine Liverpool part of the problem helped spread monoculture and plantation agriculture

Still today Soya bean enters Liverpool from

brazil

The forest and Liverpool are connected etimology of the word forest

forest out there away somewhere

Transcreation melonclically referring back site specific and time specific

Explore possibility a lot held back discourse research- time and space to give people the information letter

Joey partner graphic design- living in the Netherlands 🇳🇱

3 sites of surface - earth, table, page

Page as a landscape - place to be cultivated graphic experimentations

Very disappointed with ourselves that involves farmers 3 months is not long enough approach this project with decades in mind not to see the exhibition as a goal

Enzyme magazine - table page landscape

2nd end of march

3rd Liverpool

Collaborative group launched at the end of the biennial

Break down the work expand that cab happen on the page

One issue here

4 next issues align

2 1/2 hectors - window of biodiversity

Worked at an engo before becoming a farmer - teaching them to use pesticides Kenya

Mountain 🏔 in Kenya so interesting when he gets there full of food.

Came back to the Netherlands quit job bought land which is very expensive first food forest

Visited food forest working with restaurant in Netherlands

Gay couple concerned farmers in Brazil very right wing farmers

Man in Netherlands also gay relieved. 💓

He is vegan 2012 hard to be vegan hard to be different through deconstruction of prejudice

Vander Nashiba - environmental activist

Monoculture of the mind - how we see the world

Artist and educators

Diversity of thinking

Creating food forests for the mind

Biodiversity as an adverb

Art is a great plant form to start that

Art is never right or wrong

Selection processes who’s better who’s not

Goes against the normal channels

Hiding let him receive honest criticism behind the counter listening first hand to complaints

Strategy of invisibility

Playing against the normal this is my art on a plinth I’m

A genius ☺️

Art school taught radical thinkers

Speak about my influences etimology related to influenza contaminated by other artists trying to get it out of our system still trying to engage in a dialogue somehow.

In Rio men wearing a suite 40degree whether colonial thought imposed Portuguese

Glass is not really needed in Portugal it is too hot air conditioning bill tripe

Colonialism is the opposite

Denaturalise the use of things

DNA totally colonised

State of doubt is constant

Choose right or left

No right or wrong

Teach at an art school

Traditional art school

How does your practice fit

I do sculpture as an artist

We do use more autonomous objects but I do use site specific

Mark Wright - Stop flying - we are alway flying in our minds ☺️

We have to fit specifics as a teacher you can bring a certain spice as a teacher

When I’m a teacher I’m a teacher

My thoughts 💭

Jorge lecture was so amazing! This idea that we could heal the planet by reviving food forest is so fascinating. It reminded me of how Iv always had an interest in the industrial hinterland when you see nature breaking through the cracks, it’s like Mother Nature is reclaiming all the neglected spaces. If only we would let her heal and reclaim more of what we’ve stolen.

I had a one to one with Jorge after the Q&A both of which were so engaging. I loved this new idea he has to take his work further because the subject matter is such an important issue he feels it should last years or even decades! Let’s just hope our species has decades left. Maybe this project will help highlight our need for a more sustainable way of farming.

When he spoke about his Restauro installation, I love the fact that he used so many different elements in order to create connections. The sounds of the food forest, the monoculture and the farmers, the restaurant furniture, farmers supply, the naturally grown foods and the unknowing viewer are all part of his art work, but that being said I really respected the fact that Jorge saw the issue as much bigger than his art work and definitely much bigger than any exhibition! This issue itself is so important to all of us and is integral to our survival as a species. I can see how he must be struggling to give the project the amount of attention it so rightly deserves.

Jorge wanted to be anonymous in his own installation. I love this idea of collecting honest feed back from viewer its definitely an important part of Jorges work. The viewers digestive systems are part of his work much like our digestive systems sculpt the land. Jorge actually had a profound affect on his viewers digestive systems improving their bowl function, which shows us how important it is to eat local naturally grown foods, it leads to happy guts. Maybe not happy participators but a faster functioning bowl is good for your health.

We discussed how nature is always giving us a helping hand. Antidotes and poisons always grown near by each other. I always say Mother Nature is trying to help us. Unfortunately we are still not listening hard enough and putting enough into action. The planet will recover but its the human race that will not survive if we don’t act.

His inspiration of three Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson is definitely a piece that has intrigued me personally this idea that you let the site dictate the outcome of your art is something I have experienced with being an installation artist. I had to find the perfect available space in a short amount of time and only then could I create my final outcome the space dictate how it looked and in the end there were so many elements that added to my work it becoame perfect in its placement and naturally evolved on its own much like Smithson and Jorge’s work this site specific art work can be exciting and inspiring to let the control go and hand it over to its environment. Installation art works have been such a draw to me as an artist and I know listening to Jorge has really helped me look further at my own work next year.

We spoke in the one to one about layers. I use layers a lot within my work after a discussion with Rory I realised my work always involved time and a journey somehow. So when I was taking with Jorge we discussed how he was looking at earth, table and page. He seemed to really love my videos with layered footage and my prints, which was such a massive compliment, but he also seemed interested in seeing my installation which unfortunately is no longer showing. I would like to redo it though on a larger scale one day just like Jorge says the issue of our environment is such a important subject. I feel it can never be over done or highlighted enough.

Jorge excitingly also talked about a magazine he is launching and he wants Liverpool and our university to be part of the 3rd edition, I’m not great at writing so I’m not sure I would be a good candidate for this, but it would be wonderful to be involved somehow.

Jorges lecture also helped me to understand the Biennal 2020 theme so much more. I did attend both the LJMU talk and the Medical Institute talk in October, but there was still very much an element of uncertainty and also their language was so academic at times that is was hard to follow. So thank you Jorge 🙏🙏 now I understand it better the idea makes much more sense.

Im really look forward to seeing Jorge again in April, we also discussed my community project, which he seemed intrigued by. It made me realise no matter how I do this semester I have learned so much. I also have so many exciting projects in mind for next semester, but for now I’m going to enjoy my Christmas break with my family.

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